montanajoe: Giving a person a warning so that they can put their affairs in order and make their wishes known to their families seems like a no brainier (excuse the pun).
mountainbunny: Not sure the point of this test.
cynwoody: WTF cares? Unless there's a cure, of course.
Yelle: However, there is NOTHING other than perhaps lifestyle changes that can be done to change it at this point. That raises a good question, do you really want to know?
alexander_busek:
Even if no real cure were ever found, having a reliable, early test for Alzheimer's would yield at least two significant benefits:
A positive finding would represent a definite diagnosis, making it possible to more or less discount other diseases, thus allowing medical practioners to focus on treating the patient's Alzheimer's and not wasting their efforts on (and burdening the patient with) other therapies. Medications could be administered and therapies applied which were specific to Alzheimer's (and which might have at least a palliative effect).
A negative finding would, conversely, mean that the medical personnel could eliminate Alzheimer's as a possible explanation for the patient's incipient symptoms. They could then focus on other possible explanations.
Regards,
Point well made; other therapies that might make sense in non-Alzheimer’s cases of dementia would be better targeted this way.
Also in the continuing slow research on Alzheimer’s disease, experimental or serendipitous treatments (as for other disease conditions) that continued to show some positive sign in the Alzheimer’s cases could be more solidly attributed to their effect on Alzheimer’s rather than on something else. In the case of fighting many diseases, often many small doors are opened rather than (or before) one large door.
It wasn’t difficult to diagnose, at least in my dad. None of the medicines helped. He progressed like a textbook case. The VA hospital treated him well. He died without pain and with loved ones.
The only surprises were his conversion, and that he came to enjoy TV, which he didn’t before.
Until medical care catches up, I will rely on eating brain food (fish and seafood, krill oil), getting enough sleep, drinking caffeine (it has been shown to help), and watching my blood sugar and weight.
There will eventually be a cure, possibly within my lifetime. I hope to see it. Until then, or at least till the day that there is decent treatment, the tests will cause more pain than they can prevent.