Patients who declared a neurodegenerative disease had cognitive impairment five to nine years before their diagnosis. This is revealed by a very encouraging study for the future of the treatment of these diseases, the most common of which, Alzheimer’s disease, affects approximately 1 million people in France.
Diagnosing dementia ten years before the visible symptoms: it is certainly possible. This is according to a new study published in the journal Alzheimers & Dementia, published on October 12. By studying data from the UK Biobank (which collects medical data from the British), a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge made this observation: certain deficiencies in areas such as problem solving, reaction times, memorizing series of numbers or falls are more frequent in people who develop dementia-related illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease.
If we manage to detect them earlier, people at high risk of developing this neurodegenerative disease or even Parkinson’s could benefit from clinical trials or new treatments, even before showing symptoms.
This would represent a major step forward for patients, because once the symptoms are clear enough to allow a real diagnosis of the disease, it is often already too late to be able to really act on its evolution.
Cognitive disorders visible 5 to 9 years before the diagnosis
In concrete terms, the researchers therefore analyzed the biomedical data of half a million Britons aged 40 to 69. In particular, they analyzed data from tests around problem solving, memory, reaction times and the number of falls. They then compared the data of people who declared a neurodegenerative disease (Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s) and those of people without the disease. Conclusion: In the five to nine years preceding the declaration of the obvious symptoms of the diseases, the people already obtained worse results than the healthy people, a sign that they already had cognitive disorders.
For example, people with Alzheimer’s were more likely than others to have had a fall in the previous 12 months, those who had developed PSP (progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare neurological disease), were twice as likely to have having had a fall. And, in general, all the patients who declared a neurodegenerative disease had reported a worse overall state of health than the others.
A further step towards the development of effective treatments against Alzheimer’s
The results of this study are interesting because they are an additional step in screening those most at risk of developing a neurodegenerative disease, such as people over the age of 50, those with high blood pressure or who do not enough physical exercise. Intervening at an early stage of the disease would make it possible to know whether existing or developing treatments are effective because, for the time being, they are very little effective on patients in whom the disease has been clearly detected and whose symptoms are therefore advanced. .