2024-01-27 17:56:40
Around 55 million people around the world live with dementia, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The most common form is Alzheimer’s, an incurable disease that causes deterioration of brain functions.
As symptoms worsen over time, it is important for both patients and caregivers to prepare for the eventual need for increased support as the disease progresses. With this in mind, researchers from the University of Texas, USA, created a new method that will help Alzheimer’s patients to accurately identify where they are on the disease’s development scale.
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- Dajiang Zhu and Li Wang, associate professor of mathematics at UTA (University of Texas at Arlington), developed a tool that codes the various stages of the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
- The process called the “disease incorporation tree” (or DETree) can not only predict the five clinical clusters of Alzheimer’s disease development efficiently, but can also provide detailed information, projecting where the patient will be as they age. the disease progresses.
- This will make it possible to better predict the timing of later phases, making it easier to plan future care, says the study.
For the tests, the researchers used data from 266 individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. The results were compared with other widely used methods for predicting disease progression. The experiment was repeated several times using machine learning to validate the technique.
We are excited that our new framework is more accurate than other available prediction models (…) we hope it helps patients and their families better plan for the uncertainties of this complicated and devastating disease
Dajiang Zhu, associate professor of computer science and engineering at UTA
According to experts, the new method can also help predict the progression of other diseases with multiple stages of development, such as Parkinson’s, for example.
The information is from Medical Xpress. More details about the research are available here (in English).
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