Alzheimer’s disease affects one in nine people over the age of 65. Unfortunately, by the time doctors diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, it has already caused significant damage. Changes in the brain often begin 25 years before diagnosis.
What makes Alzheimer’s disease so difficult to diagnose?
Alzheimer’s disease is tough to diagnose because protein plaques and tangles, which clinically define Alzheimer’s, are hard to detect. To make a diagnosis, doctors look for certain symptoms and eliminate other causes.
Further complicating diagnosis, Alzheimer’s disease presents differently in each person. It’s complicated because of mutations in lots of genes and loci (up to 70 genes or loci could be involved) and the influence of environmental risks.
While genetics does not entirely explain Alzheimer’s disease, it’s responsible for ~65% of the influence. Currently, the most accurate way to see if you might get Alzheimer’s is to look into your family history and get a genetic test.
How can genetic testing help?
In 2015, scientists predicted Alzheimer’s risk in thousands of people, and they were right 71.1% of the time. They estimated risk by looking at one particular gene (APOE ε2 and ε4 variants), and the patient’s sex and age. Researchers could further enhance accuracy to nearly 80% by evaluating 21 more gene variants.
The promising news is that by knowing your genetic makeup, you can accurately predict your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Symptoms you might notice if you have Alzheimer’s disease:
- Dementia: loss of global cognitive ability of sufficient amount to interfere with normal social or occupational function.
- Memory impairment: reduced ability to remember things such as dates and names, and increased forgetfulness.
- Parkinsonism: characterised clinically by shaking, rigidity, slowness of movement and difficulty with walking and gait.
- Disinhibition: reduced ability to control, or a failure to resist a temptation, urge, or impulse.
- Language impairment: deficit in comprehension or production of language that includes reduced vocabulary, limited sentence structure, or impairments in written or spoken communication.
- Confusion: lack of clarity and coherence of thought, perception, understanding, or action.
- Personality changes: abnormal shift in patterns of thinking, acting, or feeling.
- Cognitive impairment: deficits in thinking, reasoning, or remembering.
- Agitation: extreme restlessness and excessive motor activity associated with mental distress or a feeling of inner tension.
- Seizures.
- Sleep-wake cycle disturbances: abnormality of an individual’s circadian rhythm that affects the timing of sleeping and being awake.
- Dysarthria: a neurological speech disorder characterised by poor articulation.
- Dysphagia: difficulty swallowing.
- Dystonia: increased muscular tone that causes fixed abnormal postures, with exaggerated turning and posture of the extremities and trunk.
- Gait disturbance: any disruption of the ability to walk.
- Hallucinations: vivid perceptions in a conscious and awake state that, in the absence of external stimuli, have qualities of real perception in an external objective space.
- Hypertonia: increased muscle tone so that arms or legs, for example, are stiff and difficult to move.
- Lower limb hyperreflexia: brisk and overactive lower leg reflexes.
- Myoclonus: very brief, involuntary, and random muscular contractions occurring at rest, in response to sensory stimuli, or accompanying voluntary movements.
- Optic ataxia: difficulty reaching visually guided goals in peripheral vision.
- Spastic tetraparesis: spastic weakness affecting all four limbs.
Less common symptoms you might notice:
Language impairment to some or all abilities to produce or comprehend speech and to read or write (aphasia); defect in the understanding of complex motor commands and in the execution of certain learned movements (apraxia); lack of coordination between muscles, limbs, and joints (ataxia); writing disability in the absence of motor or sensory deficits of the upper extremities (dysgraphia); inability to name or touch specific fingers (finger agnosia); deficiency in horizontal fast eye movements (oculomotor apraxia); loss of the ability to remember the meaning of words, faces, and objects (semantic dementia).
These are the products we suggest:
EmpowerDX APOE Gene Test
This at home test identifies your APOE gene status with an easy mouth swab instead of a blood test. If you have a variant (APOE4) of the APOE gene, you […]
It is important to remember:
- Not everyone with a family history develops Alzheimer’s disease.
- Conversely, some people with no family history can still get it.
- Lifestyle and environmental factors also play a role.
