When Alzheimer’s Awaits

As many as 4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease. The older you get, the greater your risk. Though controversial, DNA testing may be able to predict whether or not you’re at risk for the disease. Would you really want to know if you were?

Doctors predict 10 million Americans will have Alzheimer’s disease by the year 2040. And time isn’t stopping for anyone.

If you could find out you were going to be next, would you want to know?

"We now have good ideas about how we might be able to prevent the development or even stop the development of this disease," says neurologist Norman Foster, M.D.

Recently, researchers offered more than 250 high-risk people a DNA test to measure their chances of getting Alzheimer’s. Only 21 agreed to take it.

In the future, that knowledge could be beneficial. That is, if preventative treatments like the one being studied by Dr. Foster at the University of Michigan prove successful.

"Use of high dose vitamin E can slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease," says Dr. Foster

Neurologist Neill Graf-Radford, M.D., from Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., is looking to anti-inflammatories, like the ones taken by arthritis patients, to slow the disease.

"There are several studies showing that those with arthritis seem to have less chance of developing Alzheimer’s," says Graf-Radford.

Bill Scarborough is in that study. He says, "I go out the front door and get to the garage and say to myself, ’What am I doing out here?’"

His wife Sara is hopeful.

"It’s in his family and we have kids that we love too that we want to - maybe this will help them not to have it," she says.

Together, they are facing the possibility of the disease head on.

Twelve of the 21 patients who took the DNA test had positive DNA results for developing Alzheimer’s. After the testing, researchers say only one patient reported being depressed while two others reported anxiety. More than half found it beneficial.

Source: Ivanhoe News