New Hope for Alzheimer's Victims

Even as Janet Adkins committed suicide, the short history of Alzheimer's disease seemed to be entering a new, more hopeful phase. First, it will soon be easier to identify Alzheimer's earlier and more accurately, thus easing the needless anxiety the elderly often feel at any lapse of memory or momentary confusion. (Doctors admit that their diagnoses of the disease are wrong about 30% of the time.) Second, Alzheimer's finally appears to be yielding to treatment, though a cure could be many years away.

Last week researchers at Abbott Laboratories near Chicago announced they had developed a new biochemical test that may prove to be highly reliable in detecting a collection of molecules, called Alzheimer's disease-associated proteins (ADAP), found in substantial quantities only in patients with the illness.

In an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, investigators from Abbott and seven other research centers in the U.S. and Europe reported the results of tests of 111 samples of brain tissue taken from people who had recently died. Some suffered from Alzheimer's, some had other neurological disorders, and the rest died from unrelated causes. Using a simple procedure involving common laboratory techniques, the scientists were able to identify 86% of the patients who had been stricken with Alzheimer's. The scientists expect that within two years they will be able to develop a similar test that would detect ADAP in spinal fluid taken from living patients.

Early diagnosis will be increasingly important as new treatments for Alzheimer's become available. Drug companies are testing more than 100 compounds that may at least relieve or delay the symptoms of the illness. Last week Warner-Lambert, a New Jersey pharmaceutical firm, applied for Government permission to market Cognex, a brand of tacrine, a drug that supposedly slows the loss of brain function in 40% of Alzheimer's patients who are given the medication. Such a drug, along with the new test to detect the disease, could conceivably add one or more productive years to the lives of Alzheimer's victims.