As the life expectancy is on an upscale trend, Dementia and subsequent Alzheimer’s is becoming a common finding  Guidelines to detect hallmarks of this disease before the symptoms will be a grear breakthrough in Geriatric medicine. But these findings may not be of great use now as it is still at the research stage. Nevertheless here are the guidelines.

   Team@CMHF

Medical experts have issued new guidelines for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease that, for the first time, attempt to identify the hallmarks of the disease before symptoms occur.

The original guidelines, published in 1984, dealt only with diagnosing Alzheimer’s once a person started showing signs of dementia.
Since then, new discoveries have shown the disease can cause changes in the brain a decade or more before symptoms appear.

The new guidelines — being published online today by the National Institute on Aging and the Chicago-based Alzheimer’s Association — are the first to include the use of brain imaging and measurement of certain proteins in the blood and spinal fluid to spot changes that could be due to Alzheimer’s.
There are no approved treatments to slow or stop the progression of Alzheimer’s.

But establishing standards for detecting it earlier will allow scientists to test potential treatments that eventually could be prescribed to people at risk, experts say.

The guidelines describe Alzheimer’s as a continuum of three stages: preclinical disease, mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s dementia.

In the preclinical stage, changes in the brain can be present but there are no obvious signs of dementia. In the second stage mild cognitive impairment occurs when progressive declines in memory and mental ability are noticeable but not severe enough to interfere with daily life.

The recommendations for diagnosing the third and final stage — Alzheimer’s dementia — were also revised to reflect that other aspects of cognition outside of memory loss, such as trouble recalling words and impaired reasoning and judgment, may be the first and most dominant sign of dementia.

Reference:   http://heraldnews.suntimes.com/news/4915674-418/new-guidelines-for-identifying-alzheimers-prior-to-symptoms.html