Researchers say detecting Alzheimer’s Disease early could come down to testing how well someone smells. Recently, Pat Summitt, pictured here in green, succumbed to the illness. (aaronisnotcool/flickr.com)
One of the attendees, Doctor Jeffrey Kaye, director of the Layton Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Oregon Health and Science University, said memory and sense of smell are closely linked.
“It may be that there’s an association by just happening to be nearby, or it may be more intrinsic, that there’s something about the olfactory nerve cells that makes them more susceptible,” he said.
In one study, researchers chose about 400 participants with an average age of 80 for a smell identification test. Four years after the study began, 50 people showed signs of dementia and scored lower on the identification test, in some cases before areas of the brain began to show significant signs of atrophy in brain scans.
Kaye warned that a smell test alone can’t be used to determine if a person has Alzheimer’s disease. However, the test is cheap and easier to administer than a brain scan, and could be used alongside other tests for people who are worried about memory loss or a genetic predisposition to the disease. Kaye added there’s much more interest in the disease today than when he started.
“I’ve been in this field for over 25 years, and it is truly remarkable the changes that have happened,” he added. “And it’s important because it is a public health problem that we’re going to be facing, with the growth in numbers of people who are affected by dementia.”
An estimated 110,000 Tennesseans and more than five million people nationally have Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. The national number is expected to increase to 16 million by 2050.
