What is Alzheimer’s Disease?
Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that destroys ones memory and many other important mental functions. At a basic level these symptoms are caused by a dysfunction of neurons and the communication of neurons, the synapses. For many years two defining characteristics of AD found in postmortem brains of AD patients were neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaques. These two very “sciency” words essentially mean large accumulations of certain types of proteins that cannot get broken down. Along with the tangles and plaques, recent studies have shown a correlation between AD and type 2 diabetes. It seems that in people with AD the insulin signaling pathway in the brain, yes insulin does play a role in the brain, is damaged. The insulin pathway in the brain has been shown to play a key role in our learning and memory. In people with type 2 diabetes their insulin receptors are resistant to insulin. In other words people with type 2 diabetes do not have a problem producing insulin, like people with type 1 diabetes, but their body simply does not respond the way it should to insulin. Researchers believe that insulin resistance is one of the causes of the symptoms seen in AD.
How do we Diagnose Alzheimer’s now?
According to the Mayo Clinic the current action for diagnosing AD is to perform memory and impairment tests, look for behavior changes, look at medical history and rule out other ailments that could be causing these symptoms. Once all of this is done then a doctor may diagnose a person with AD. With that said the only sure fire way to correctly diagnose a person with AD is by looking at the brain postmortem.
Can we diagnose AD with more certainty and earlier?
Recent research at two Canadian universities may have found a way to achieve an earlier and more definitive diagnosis. By studying postmortem brains of patients with AD the researchers discovered an enzyme that gathers around the plaques and tangles characteristically found in AD brains. Not only does this enzyme gather around AD specific plaques and tangles but it seems to stay away from other similar plaques. Using this knowledge researchers were able to develop a small radio-labeled molecule that can bind specifically to these plaques and tangles. The important part about this radio-labeled molecule is that is can show up on PET scans of the brain. Currently there are still some obstacles before this type of diagnosis can be used on for AD patients. For one the radio-labeled molecule has yet to used on humans and the diagnosis would be very expensive.
Novel Brain Scan Technique Could Definitively Diagnose Alzheimer's Disease
