Dementia Breakthrough Vital For Future Treatment!

(DailyDig.com) – Scientists in London created a new, incredibly accurate test to assist doctors in predicting a patient’s likelihood of receiving a dementia diagnosis nearly nine years before onset.

Researchers from London’s Queen Mary University estimate the accuracy to be over 80 percent. The testing method they developed used a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan of the brain to reveal the brain’s changes in the Default Mode Network (DMN).

The common diagnosis of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease, usually first affects the DMN, which encompasses many regions in the brain. The network operates when a person is not pursuing a mental task but more relaxed, like recalling a memory or daydreaming.

The university’s researchers examined over 1,100 scans from people in the medical database of the UK Biobank. They traced the connections between ten DMN regions of the brain. They examined each scan’s patterns of connections between those regions for any indication of dementia. Based on their findings, they developed a prediction of each patient’s scans to determine if they were likely to develop dementia.

After the researchers completed their predictions of each patient’s scans, they compared their conclusions with the actual patient’s medical records. They found that the method they developed was accurate in predicting the patient developing dementia nearly nine years before the actual diagnosis.

Another finding from the research was that, for patients who developed dementia, they could predict the length of time for a diagnosis to occur with a two-year error rate. Additional findings showed that Alzheimer’s disease had a genetic link to the changes in connectivity in the DMN.

The current method of testing for dementia is to give the patient a mental ability test. This includes cognitive abilities, memory tests, and brain scans. Charles Marshall, the neurologist and author of Queen Mary University’s study, said that determining who will get the dementia disease in the future will allow treatments to be developed to stop the damage that is caused when brain cells are lost, as that is the cause of the disease.