Experts on Alzheimer's disease are proposing new criteria for diagnosing the dementia which would pick it up at an earlier stage and should get more patients onto treatment or into trials of new drugs.
An international expert group said the new guidelines would revise the definition of Alzheimer's to take into account recent scientific developments - including the use of so-called biomarkers, or biological signals, which can show if a person is at risk of the disease before they have any symptoms.
This pre-clinical stage, which can be about 10 years before dementia sets in, is widely seen as the best time to intervene in Alzheimer's. Recent studies have shown that brain scans, spinal fluid analyses and other tests can help predict who will develop Alzheimer's and they are becoming crucial to researchers and drug firms trying to develop new treatments.
"It's very important for us to move from the old way of seeing Alzheimer's disease to a new one that incorporates the importance of biomarkers," said Bruno Dubois from France's Salpetriere Hospital.
"There is no longer a reason to wait until patients have developed full-blown dementia," said Dubois, who leads the International Working Group for New Research Criteria for the Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease.
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