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Alzheimer’s disease is a debilitating neuro-degenerative disease associated with memory loss, dementia and the eventual loss of motor functions. Often it is hard for doctors to officially diagnose someone with the disease until it has extensively progressed. According to Alzheimer’s Disease International, nearly 10 million people suffer from dementia in Europe alone, with Alzheimer’s accounting for the overwhelming majority of these cases. For years, scientists around the world have tried to come up with better treatments and a cure for the disease, but few have been shown to be particularly effective.

In a new scientific paper published in the January 1, 2012 edition of the Archives of General Psychiatry, a team of Swedish researchers have now shown that it’s possible to detect individuals with a high risk of developing Alzheimer’s 10 years before they show any outward symptoms. If their technique proves successful, it could become an important tool for managing future Alzheimer’s patients.

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Boston researchers have reported a new method for detecting subtle brain changes in people who have no memory problems but who may already be in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

The findings, published online today in the medical journal Neurology, may help speed clinical trials for potential Alzheimer’s treatments, according to Dr. Bradford Dickerson, an associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and lead author of the study. “We need efficient, cost-effective ways to screen people for research,” said Dickerson, who also is a brain specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital. “This will potentially give us a tool that will help identify people in a more efficient manner.”

Dickerson explained that his method is not ready for use in physicians’ offices. Researchers and the medical community still must pinpoint reliable markers for the disease that could be used much the same way doctors now measure early signs of heart disease by monitoring patients’ cholesterol levels.

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