Memory Tests May Help Detect Alzheimer’s

Mental tests that reveal problems with memory and decision-making can help diagnose hard-to-detect Alzheimer’s disease more than a year before the onset of symptoms, researchers said.

“These findings might help us understand the underlying evolution of the early neurodegenerative process . . . and might facilitate early detection of Alzheimer’s disease,” wrote Peijun Chen of the University of Pittsburgh in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The findings confirmed the results of at least three earlier studies that pinpointed memory deficits as a precursor to Alzheimer’s, which afflicts millions of mostly elderly victims and has no cure.