Scientists used a scan of “resting” brain activity to identify whether people would go on to develop dementia, with an estimated 80% accuracy up to nine years before people received a diagnosis. If the findings were confirmed in a larger cohort, the scan could become a routine procedure in memory clinics, scientists said.
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June 6, 2024
expert reaction to test claiming to predict dementia nine years before diagnosis
A study published in Nature Mental Health looks at the possibility of early dementia prediction from brain scans.
Dr Julia Dudley, Head of Strategic Research Programmes at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said:
“One in three people with dementia never receive a formal diagnosis, so there’s an urgent need to improve the way people with the condition are diagnosed. This will be even more important as dementia becomes a treatable condition.
“This study provides intriguing insights into early signs that someone might be at greater risk of developing dementia. While this technique will need to be validated in further studies, if it is, it could be a promising addition to the toolkit of methods to detect the diseases that cause dementia as early as possible. An earlier and accurate diagnosis is key to unlocking personalised care and support, and, soon, to accessing first-of-a-kind treatments that are on the horizon.”
Dr Sebastian Walsh, NIHR Doctoral Fellow in Public Health Medicine, University of Cambridge, said:
“These results are potentially exciting, and there are some really good things about the way the team have conducted this study. However, there are a couple of important caveats.
“Most significantly, the sample was small (only 100 people with dementia) and the time between brain scan and diagnosis was up to 9 years, but actually an average of 3.7 years. Given delays in the way diagnoses appear in the UK biobank cohort, it is not surprising that the ’new’ cases of dementia actually had cognitive impairment at the time of the scans. So before we can be truly confident that this technology can predict dementia onset (rather than just be an early indicator it is present), it will be really important to see these findings demonstrated in bigger samples with a much longer delay between scan and onset of cognitive symptoms.
“Importantly, the Biobank cohort is quite unrepresentative of the population, and the average age in this study was 70, whereas the average age that people develop dementia in the UK is mid to late 80s, so we need to see these results repeated for more diverse and older samples.
“Lastly, the logistics of MRI scans which are expensive and this particular approach needs a high-quality scan which requires people to keep their head still.”
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