More Accurate Ways to Predict Alzheimer's

Alzheimer’s disease, as you may already know, is a mortifying brain disease that causes memory loss. This disease has long been a difficult one to diagnose and even when a patient is diagnosed it may be too late to do anything about it. But a new method called a spinal fluid test and also new PET scans may help diagnose patients earlier. Which will give the drugs treating the disease more time to take affect. In a spinal fluid test, a needle is used to take liquid out the spinal space. PET scans, however, are brain scans that show the amyloid plaques, which are a characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease. But the new PET scans are not available to everybody yet, on the other hand spinal fluid tests are. There has been a study that involved testing the spinal fluid of 114 patients with normal memories, 200 with memory problems, and 102 with Alzheimer’s disease to prove that people with Alzheimer’s have the characteristic protein level in the spinal fluid. There also have been debates about the use of the spinal fluid test. Doctors such as Dr. Dekosky, dean of the University of Virginia, says that once you get it “approved by the F.D.A.”, “cutting edge doctors will use it”. Others say that the test is not reliable enough even though it may help make sure that people are not developing the disease when they have weak memory problems. Also, some doctors find the procedure hard to perform because they would be putting the patient at risk. Spinal fluid tests also are believed to be painful and causes headaches, which makes it unpleasant for some patients too. But once PET scans become available, Dr. DeKosky believes that they will use that instead.

This article relates to science because it involves a disease. It involves Alzheimer’s, which you already know is a human brain disease. It also relates to biology because it involves proteins, polymers that are created from a set of twenty different amino acids, such as the amyloid plaques. It also involves body substances such as the spinal fluid, which basically is a clear liquid that surrounds the spinal cord and also the brain.

This article is very important because spinal fluid tests and PET scans will be very helpful in diagnosing Alzheimer’s and also stopping it. It will help detect it at an earlier stage in patients so they could stop it before it becomes too late to do anything. These two methods of detection may decrease the rising number of devastations caused by Alzheimer’s in America.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/health/research/10spinal.html?_r=1&ref=science