Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have developed a special type of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)MRI) is used to predict whether people will develop dementia in the foreseeable future.
The test itself takes just 10 minutes and has been shown to be 80% accurate in identifying dementia up to nine years before it is diagnosed.
“Although we are getting better at detecting proteins in the brain that can cause Alzheimer’s, many people live with these protein deposits in the brain for decades without developing symptoms of dementia. We hope that our method of measuring brain function will allow us to more accurately predict whether someone is at risk of developing dementia and how quickly it will happen, so we can determine if they could benefit from treatment.” He says Research leader Charles Marshall, professor of clinical neurology.
The researchers based their findings on so-called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which show activity in specific areas of the brain. The scans were carried out on a total of 1,100 people from the UK Biobank, a health database containing information on more than half a million people in the UK.
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