Plotting the Demise of Alzheimer’s: New Study is Major Test for Power of Early Action

When dealing with many types of diseases from heart disease to diabetes, or even cancer the best advice is always to detect the disease at the earliest point possible. This head start gives doctors time to analyze and prescribe the best course of action for the patients to battle this disease. Now there is a new line of thinking from researches at The Harvard Aging Brain Study who believe that this approach to Alzheimer’s disease may be appropriate. While early attempts to trace the timeline and the effects of Alzheimer’s disease have been unsuccessful, researches remain optimistic about the changes of finding a correlation to the time in which the disease is discovered, and the treatment options and their effectiveness that follow. Currently it is estimated that five million people in the US live with Alzheimer’s and that number is expected to exceed thirteen million by 2050. The hopes of researchers lie in two new studies, the future A3, and the ongoing A4 study which will target cognitively  normal patients who have high levels of amyloid beta in their brains.  The A4 study is tracking 65 to 85 year olds with normal congition hoping to identify over 1000 with elevated amyloid beta levels.  Then it will see if removing amyloid beta or the tau which tangles brain neurons needs to be removed to see a clinical effect.  The A3 study wants to start even earlier and test people in their 50’s or early 60’s whose amyloid levels have yet to rise. These studies will determine if catching the disease early has any merit and if it can in fact yield treatment options for those who are effected at an earlier age.

Key Points:

  • 1It’s been shown that amyloid beta, the protein thought to cause Alzheimer’s, accumulates in the brain up to ten years before obvious symptoms.
  • 2A new study is poised to follow people given anti-amyloid drugs, who are cognitively sound, yet show high levels of the protein.
  • 3This could be very important, because catching the disease before symptoms manifest could prevent significant neuro-degeneration.


Alzheimer’s is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States, killing about 94,000 people annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Is there a way to see the signs of ALzheimers early and prevent the disease from spreading?
Early detection helping the fight against Alzheimer’s.
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Written by HealthStatus
Medical Writer & Editor

HealthStatus has been operating since 1998 providing the best interactive health tools on the Internet, millions of visitors have used our health risk assessment, body fat and calories burned calculators. The HealthStatus editorial team has continued that commitment to excellence by providing our visitors with easy to understand high quality health content for many years.

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