New research suggests that memory and thinking tests could signal Alzheimer's up to 18 years before the disease can be diagnosed, UPI reported.
Researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago found that people who scored lower overall on memory and thinking tests had an 85 percent greater risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.
"The changes in thinking and memory that precede obvious symptoms of Alzheimer's disease begin decades before," Kumar B. Rajan, one of the study authors, said in a statement. "While we cannot currently detect such changes in individuals at risk, we were able to observe them among a group of individuals who eventually developed dementia due to Alzheimer's."
For the study, researchers collected and analyzed data from more than 2,000 African- and European-American people from Chicago with an average age of 73 years old. The participants who did not have Alzheimer's. at the start of the study. Researchers had them complete a memory and thinking skills test every three years for 18 years, The Dispatch Times reported.
They found that 23 percent of African-Americans and 17 percent of European-Americans developed Alzheimer's disease during the study. Those who scored lower overall on the memory and thinking tests had an increased risk of developing the disease.
During the first year of the study, they found that participants with lower test scores were about 10 times more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease than people with higher scores, with the odds increasing by 10 for every standard deviation that the score was lower than the average.
The findings, which were supported by the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer's Association, are detailed in the online issue of Neurology.
