In breaking health news, an American neuroscientist believes there is now a way to tell if someone has Alzheimer’s disease years before they show any signs of having it.
As reported by the ABC, Professor Peter Snyder of Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital in the U.S. tested 80 people with an average of 61 and discovered that retinal plaque on someone’s eye could indicate that they will develop the disease later in life.
“What I’m looking for are tiny, tiny inclusion bodies or plaques in the retina that seem to correlate with the amount of amyloid protein built up in the brain,” Professor Snyder says.
However, while this is a potentially revolutionary discovery, it doesn’t prevent it from happening, which is why Professor Snyder understands that people may not actually want to know if they’re going to develop Alzheimer’s.
“They’re raising families and sending kids off to college and going to work and I do worry about this,” he explains,
Signs of Alzheimer’s disease
Did you know that more than 350,000 people in Australia are living with dementia?
The symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease can come in an array of forms, but if you, or a loved one, are concerned about some of the below indicators, contact your GP to learn more.
A change in personality
Disorientation of time and place
Loss of memory
Inability to do everyday tasks
Difficulty performing familiar tasks
Forgetting simple words and replacing them with inappropriate ones
