If you could find out that you were likely to develop Alzheimer's, would you want to know?
Researchers from McGill University argue that patients and their families could better plan and manage care given this extra time. So the team has developed new artificial intelligence software that uses positron emission tomography (PET) scans to predict whether at-risk patients will develop Alzheimer's within two years.
They retrospectively studied 273 individuals with mild cognitive impairment who participated in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, a global research study that collects imaging, genetics, cognitive, cerebrospinal fluid and blood data to help define the progression of Alzheimer's disease.
Patients with mild cognitive impairment have noticeable problems with memory and thinking tasks that are not severe enough to interfere with daily life. Scientists know these patients have abnormal amounts of tau and beta-amyloid proteins in specific brain regions involved in memory, and this protein accumulation occurs years before the patients have dementia symptoms.
However, not everyone with mild cognitive impairment will go on to develop dementia, and the McGill researchers aimed to predict which ones will.
First, the team trained their artificial intelligence software to identify patients who would develop Alzheimer's, by identifying key features in the amyloid PET scans of the ADNI participants. Next, they assessed the performance of the trained AI using an independent set of ADNI amyloid PET scans. It predicted Alzheimer's progression with an accuracy of 84 percent before symptom onset, as reported in a recent paper in Neurobiology of Aging.
The researchers hope their new AI tool will help improve patient care, as well as accelerate research to find a treatment for Alzheimer's disease by identifying which patients to select for clinical trials.
"By using this tool, clinical trials could focus only on individuals with a higher likelihood of progressing to dementia within the time frame of the study. This will greatly reduce the cost and time necessary to conduct these studies," said Serge Gauthier, MD, a senior author and professor of neurology and neurosurgery and of psychiatry at McGill, in a recent news release.
The new AI tool is now available to scientists and students, but the McGill researchers need to conduct further testing before it will be approved and available to clinicians.
Previously: New study hints at why infamous gene variant increases odds of developing Alzheimer's disease, Alzheimer's researchers call on citizen scientists to play an online game and Alzheimer's puzzle pieces are coming together
Photo by Lukas Budimaier
