“We advocate, based on these findings, that the criteria for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease should include MRI scans,” said Dr. Ranjan Duara, who was the lead author of a study by Florida’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. “By incorporating MRIs into the assessment of patients with memory problems, early diagnosis can be standardized and done far more accurately.”

Duara works at Miami’s Wien Center for Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders at Mount Sinai Medical Center where he is medical director.

As the most common cause of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease is often indicated by memory loss, disorientation, and deterioration of reading and speaking skills. Because other syndromes or disease’s share these symptoms, often the only way, previously, to confirm Alzheimer’s disease in a patient was by autopsy, which would show the affected brain area.

Previously doctors only used a brain scan to rule out other possible causes of the Alzheimer’s symptoms, such as a stroke.

Researchers studied 260 people in the Miami and Tampa, Florida, areas who were suffering some memory loss. The MRI showed atrophy in the brain regions commonly associated with Alzheimer’s and helped researchers accurately diagnose that the memory loss was from the disease and not from other sources.

Additionally, the study showed that MRIs can spot shrinkage in the brain of people not yet showing signs of Alzheimer’s. These patients began showing this signs as little as two years later, suggesting the scans can be an early predictor of the disease.

The study was funded in part by a National Institute on Aging grant.

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