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Diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease

27/Sep/2006: Diagnosing Alzheimer at its early stages will get easier in future, using a computer-aided technique, which will identify the first symptoms of this disease, according to a new study carried out by researchers at University of California, Irvine.

This neurodegenerative disease is considered as a major health challenge in developed nations, affecting the elderly and almost 50% of patients suffering from dementia.

Brain cells of the patients affected by the Alzheimer’s disease, deteriorates as the disease progresses, allowing water molecules to move freely throughout the brain. Damaged brain cells increases ‘Apparent Diffusion Coefficient (ADC)’, a measurement used to study the distribution of water in the brain.

Researchers at University of California, studied two groups of elderly people, one group comprising elderly persons with mild cognitive impairment (a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease), and the other group consisted of people without this impairment.

All the participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain and performed memory-recall tasks. The new computer –aided mapping technology was used in the MRI to measure ‘Apparent Diffusion Coefficient’ values in different areas of the brain.

The results showed that participants with mild cognitive impairment, had more water content in the white-matter areas, hippocampus (area of brain associated with memory), temporal lobe grey matter and the corpus callosum. The increase in ADC values in the hippocampus region was the main reason for the poor performance of the participants, with mild cognitive impairment, in the memory-recall tasks.

The findings of this study will be published in the October’s issue of the journal ‘Radiology’. The new computer-aided technology will allow scientists to understand more about Alzheimer’s disease and how it develops in the brain and to discover new methods for treating this disease.

K Siva
Further Reading
http://www.astridguide.org/
http://www.memorystudy.org/

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