A highly sensitive new test could lead to a different way to diagnose people with Alzheimer’s disease, possibly helping find the illness in its early stages when there might be time for treatment. While as many as 4 million Americans are thought to suffer from the memory-destroying illness, the only way to diagnose it definitively is by studying brain tissue during an autopsy. It is important to have some way to diagnose the disease while the patient is still alive, especially during its early stages, so experimental treatments can be evaluated, and to catch it at a time when the disease might be treatable.
