Early signs of Alzheimer's disease found in patients as young as 20

The telltale signs of Alzheimer’s can be seen in people as young as 20, research shows. This is a ‘much younger age than the scientists ever imagined’.

 

The ‘unprecedented’ finding suggests that the disease starts to eat away at the brain half a century before symptoms develop.

 

The discovery raises the prospect of giving people drugs in the very earliest stages, when it is easiest to treat, and even stopping the disease in its tracks.

However, British experts cautioned that the research is still at an early stage. 

 

Crucially, it isn’t known how many people who have the early signs of Alzheimer’s in their brains in their 20s will go on to develop the disease. 

 

Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia affect more than 800,000 Britons and, worldwide, the number of sufferers is predicted to treble to 44million by 2050 as the population ages.

 

With no cure for dementia and existing drugs of limited use, the Prime Minister David Cameron has described dementia as ‘the key health challenge of this generation’.

 

Researchers, from Northwestern University in Chicago, examined the brains of elderly people with and without Alzheimer’s, as well as samples taken from 13 people aged between 20 and 66. These younger people were free of memory problems when they died.

 

Tests showed that beta-amyloid, the toxic protein that clogs up the brain in Alzheimer’s, had started building up in people as young as 20.

 

It had been thought that the damage to the brain started just 15 or 20 years before the disease takes hold.

 

Lead researcher Professor Changiz Geula said: ‘Discovering that amyloid begins to accumulate so early in life is unprecedented.’