Alzheimer's starts years before symptoms appear, research showsRSS Feed

Brain injury similar to that seen in Alzheimer's patients has been detected in seemingly healthy older people who have amyloid plaques in their brain.

A study published in the Annals of Neurology used two brain imaging techniques to identify older people who could benefit from therapies to prevent dementia.

Keith Johnson of Massachusetts General Hospital said that this indicates that Alzheimer's begins years before symptoms appear and that amyloid plaques are a indication of this process.

"We see that when amyloid deposits are present, even in cognitively normal individuals, the degenerative changes of Alzheimer's are underway. Long-term studies to track these changes and observe how they evolve are ongoing," he explained.

This comes after the Alzheimer's society suggested that people over the age of 75 should be screened for signs of dementia.

The charity claimed that there are approximately 750,000 people with dementia in the UK but more than half of these have not been diagnosed.

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