An Alzheimers treatment depends on the diagnosis
Finding suitable Alzheimers treatments is made difficult due to the nature of the condition. Further, diagnosing the condition in a patient is not an easy task either. It is very difficult to know beforehand that people who exhibit certain symptoms of Alzheimers (such as forgetfulness) will actually go on to suffer from the condition.
The reason is that there are many other conditions, similar to Alzheimers, which may not in fact be Alzheimers at all but the actual diagnosis as to whether or not a patient has this condition cannot be made until the patient is actually suffering from it. A patient could be suffering from other cases of dementia. If they were subscribed an experimental Alzheimers treatment but were in actual fact suffering from Pick's disease, for example, then this condition would respond differently.
Early detection helps Alzheimers treatment
It is due to Alzheimers disease being so difficult to diagnose, that examiners are often not sure of their diagnosis until the disease has progressed to such a stage that treatment is less effective.
Therefore an early diagnosis is paramount in maximising the effectiveness of the Alzheimers treatment that is available. This would allow sufferers of this condition, as well as their family and friends, to make proper provision for future medical needs and to ensure that they have their financial and legal matters resolved very early on and before the condition reaches moderate or severe stages.
It can be quite clearly seen that when research studies are being carried out for Alzheimers, all participants need to me carefully checked and monitored to increase the probability that they actually suffer from Alzheimers disease.
As well as the issues involved in ensuring that research candidates are potential Alzheimers patients, there is another factor that needs to be verified: how to measure improvement after a particular treatment has been administered.
Presently, the studies which are being carried out to evaluate how effective new Alzheimers treatments are involve using neuropsychological tests on patients before and after treatment. The duration of these studies is about three months or more and so what consultants will look for is an improvement in the test scores or no signs of test scores worsening (because the scores of patients who are untreated usually tend to worsen over time).
The problem with these neuropsychological tests is that they tend to be influenced by things such as the mood of the patient (as well as of the examiner), the time of day etc and as such it may not be a true reflection of the patient's mental faculties.
Research in Alzheimers disease is presently focussed on finding a biological marker that would allow the development of a simple laboratory test for the condition. It would be ideal if the test was something as quick and easy as a pregnancy test that could diagnose the disease very early on and lead to effective Alzheimers treatment.
