Cognitive and functional changes may appear as early as nine years before someone is officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or a dementia-related disorder, according to new research. A study of U.K. Biobank data found that for several neurodegenerative syndromes, these changes in individuals were spotted five to nine years prior to the disorders, leading to the possibility of early intervention for at-risk individuals.

According to MedPage Today, Timothy Rittman, of the University of Cambridge and one of the coauthors of the study that appeared in Alzheimer's and Dementia, said the findings of their study offers a window of opportunity to intervene very early in the disease process of Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia.

“Before now we haven’t been sure how early changes are detectable,” he said, “Our study has found it is possible to detect subtle changes five to 10 years before a diagnosis, meaning that it would be possible to screen people very easily.”

Rittman added that catching people early means they can also be recruited into clinical trials of prevention strategies and new drugs to slow down the disease at a time when these methods would be most beneficial.

The U.K. Biobank study included people between ages 40 and 69 recruited between 2006 and 2010. Rittman and his team assessed baseline cognitive and functional measures in 2,778 people who subsequently developed Alzheimer’s, 211 who developed frontotemporal dementia or FTD, 133 who developed progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), 40 who developed dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), and 73 who developed multiple system atrophy (MSA).

The researchers then compared their baseline scores with data from 493,735 Biobank controls who did not develop a neurodegenerative disease. They found extensive differences in both cognitive and physical assessments between individuals who were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and those who were not, says MedPage Today. The people who were eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer’s scored worse than the controls in fluid intelligence, reaction time, numeric memory, prospective memory, and pair-matching.

Similar findings appeared with the other study subjects who developed other neurodegenerative diseases. Those who were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and PSP were also more likely to suffer falls than the control group.

“Our approach can form the basis for pre-diagnostic cognitive and functional screening to recruit into trials of disease prevention and disease modifying therapies for neurodegenerative diseases,” Rittman and his co-authors said. “A screening panel based on cognition and function could be followed by disease-specific biomarkers to further improve risk stratification,” they added.

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