Early detection allows intervention at the most effective time
An analysis of UK Biobank data found that people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia-related symptoms started showing signs of brain disorders 9 years ago. Timothy Rittman, a professor at the University of Cambridge in the UK and co-author of ‘Alzheimer’s and Dementia’, and Dr. Timothy Rittman’s research results were recently published in the health care media ‘Medpage Today’.
The researchers found that people diagnosed with multiple neurodegenerative syndromes, including dementia, had changes in cognition and function 5 to 9 years before diagnosis. “We weren’t sure how early we could detect such a change,” Littman said.
This study means that it is possible to screen people at high risk for dementia early. “If you know you’ll get dementia in advance, you can treat it to delay the disease at the most effective time,” Littman said.
The subjects of this study were between 40 and 69 years of age in 2006-2010, and biometric data were available from the UK Biobank. Afterwards, the research team found 2778 people with Alzheimer’s disease, 2370 people with Parkinson’s disease, 211 people with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP: Parkinson’s disease, which shows gait disturbance, postural abnormality, and eye movement disorder). Cognition and function were evaluated in 133 patients with Lewy body dementia (DLB), and 73 patients with multiple sclerosis (MS).
The patient’s data were compared with cognitive and functional data from a control group of 493,735 who had not been diagnosed with neurodegenerative disorders. People with Alzheimer’s disease already showed differences in cognitive assessments and some bodily functions in early data. They scored worse than the control group in fluid intelligence, reaction time, numerical memory, and expected memory. The same was true for those diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia.
People with Alzheimer’s have fallen more in the past 12 months than the control group. People diagnosed with PSP fell more than twice as often as controls.
Although this study laid the foundation for the prevention and correction of neurodegenerative diseases, it was evaluated that the sample size was limited. The researchers acknowledged the limitations of the UK Biobank, saying, “The UK biobank is biased towards a population with a low overall risk of disease and is not representative of diverse racial and socioeconomic classes.”