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HEADLINE: Alzheimer's rapid brain cell loss

SOURCE: Reuters

BODY:
NEW scans show brain cells quickly and steadily disappearing in patients with Alzheimer's disease.

An international team of researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to chart a 5 per cent annual loss of brain cells in Alzheimer's patients _ up to 10 per cent in key memory areas. Healthy volunteers monitored in the study lost less than 1 per cent of their brain cells a year.

"You can see Alzheimer's disease progressing in living patients," said Paul Thompson, an assistant professor of neurology at the University of California at Los Angeles school of medicine, who led the study.

"We were stunned to see a spreading wave of tissue loss. Initially confined to memory areas, this loss moved across the brain like a lava flow, destroying more and more tissue as the disease progressed."

Writing in the   , the researchers said the findings would help doctors check if treatments were working and perhaps chart the course of the disease.

Alzheimer's is assessed using standard tests of a patient's behaviour and performance, rather than any physical evidence.

This will probably continue to be the case, said Dr Sid Gilman, director of the Alzheimer's centre at the University of Michigan.

"The diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease really depends upon demonstration of cognitive dysfunction," he said.

However, he said the test would be useful in charting future treatments.

"Currently all we have is symptomatic treatment," he said. "We have no treatment that stops the progression."

But, he added, researchers are working on ways to stop the disease, such as vaccinations that might stop the buildup of toxic proteins in the brain.

LOAD-DATE: February 6, 2003