Progress in early detection of Alzheimer’s

Jose Belardo of Lansing, Kan., spent most of his career in the U.S. Public Health Service. He worked on the front lines of disasters in such places as Haiti, Colombia and Nicaragua. At home with his three kids and wife, Elaine, he’d always been unfailingly reliable, so when he forgot their wedding anniversary two years in a row, they started to worry.

Last year, when Jose was 50, he got an evaluation at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center that included a battery of cognitive tests and an amyloid PET scan of his brain. The scan detects beta-amyloid plaques — sticky clumps of protein fragments that tend to build up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Jose said his diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease came as an inconvenient shock. Still, he and his wife believe it is better to have a diagnosis than not. Jose said he is determined not to let the diagnosis distract him from living a full life.

“I’ve got responsibilities, man. I can’t go away,” Jose said.

The prospect of having Alzheimer’s can be so scary, and the current treatment options so few, that many people dismiss memory problems or other symptoms rather than investigate them, say Alzheimer’s specialists; it’s estimated that up to half of all cases aren’t diagnosed.

But that may soon change. Researchers are making progress in measuring betaamyloid and other Alzheim- er’s biomarkers in blood that might eventually be able to reliably, inexpensively and non-invasively identify the disease years before cognitive symptoms develop.