MRI Detects Alzheimer's
Before Symptoms Appear

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Using an MRI scanning technique to track brain changes can detect Alzheimer's disease in its earliest stages, new research shows.

Investigators in London used an imaging technique called voxel-compression mapping to look at changes that occurred in the brains of four people from families with Alzheimer's disease but without symptoms of the disorder, for up to 8 years.

Findings reported in the July 21st issue of The Lancet show that the mapping technique detected the degeneration of brain cells about 3 years before clinical symptoms appeared. All individuals went on to develop the memory-robbing disorder.

Further, the technique confirmed earlier studies that identified the medial temporal lobe as the site in which Alzheimer's disease begins, and detected brain cell degeneration in areas of the brain previously not thought to be involved early on.

The serial technique was also used on 20 patients who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and 20 healthy people. The patients in this group showed widespread brain shrinkage.

The findings are important since understanding how the disease starts and progresses will guide scientists in their efforts to develop preventive therapies, Dr. Nick Fox and associates from University College London, UK, explain.

``The ability to track physical disease progression in an individual patient from the earliest symptomatic stages has implications for the assessment of new treatments,'' Fox and colleagues conclude. ``It raises the hope that we might one day be able to intervene with therapy at a very early stage, before the devastating cognitive decline of the disease has already become established.''

SOURCE: The Lancet 2001;358:201-205.

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