Sunday, August 16, 2009

Breakthrough in Alzheimer's research

A combination of proteins in the cerebrospinal fluid can reliably identify which patients with early symptoms of dementia will subsequently develop full-blown Alzheimer's disease, a research team at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, has found in a major international study. The results were published in this week's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Alzheimer's is one of the most common dementia disorders. Around 160,000 people in Sweden currently suffer from dementia, and an estimated 60 per cent of them have Alzheimer's.

"There is currently no medication that can alter the course of the disease, but the medicines currently under development will probably have the greatest effect if they are used from an early stage, so methods are needed for early diagnosis of the disease," says Dr Niklas Mattsson, a member of Kaj Blennow's group at the Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology at the University of Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska Academy.

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