News from the web:

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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