Alzheimers Staging Guidelines

New guidelines propose pre-clinical stage for Alzheimer's disease.
On its front page, the New York Times (7/14, A1, Kolata) reports, "For the first time in 25 years, medical experts are proposing a major change in the criteria for Alzheimer's disease, part of a new movement to diagnose and, eventually, treat the disease earlier." These "new diagnostic guidelines, presented Tuesday at an international Alzheimer's meeting in Hawaii, would mean that new technology like brain scans would be used to detect the disease even before there are evident memory problems or other symptoms." Should the guidelines be "adopted in the fall, as expected, some experts predict a two- to threefold increase in the number of people with Alzheimer's disease."
Reuters (7/14, Steenhuysen) reports that the new diagnostic guidelines would examine Alzheimer's just when the first bits of amyloid protein start to appear in the brain, perhaps as early as 10 years before a patient would receive a formal clinical diagnosis of dementia. Experts now believe that intervention at the earliest stages of the disease would be most effective. The new guidelines, which propose that Alzheimer's be diagnosed as either pre-clinical disease, mild disease, or advanced disease, were put together by three panels of experts assembled by the Alzheimer's Association and the National Institute on Aging.
"The new criteria update previous criteria that were established by a workgroup with experts from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association," WebMD (7/13, Doheny) reported. "The Alzheimer's Association and the National Institute on Aging are launching a website...to solicit input from additional experts." Comments will be accepted until this September.