Are There Any At-Home Tests I Can Take To Self-Diagnose Alzheimer's Disease?

May 4, 2009 -- Question: Are there any at-home tests I can take to self-diagnose Alzheimer's disease?

Answer: There are no reliable tests that you could use to diagnose it at home. There have been urine tests and other kinds of tests that people have tried to sell that suggest that they could make the diagnosis.

This is a diagnosis which is easy in many patients but a bit more difficult in others. We don't have any data about how reliable these home tests would be, or in fact, whether they would be accurate enough at an early point in the course of having a problem with your thinking function.

And we have no evidence that suggests that they would help you if you were not symptomatic but just wanted to know if you were going to get the disease at some point. So we don't recommend any tests that you might buy at a store. The way to make an accurate diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease or some other difficulty with memory is to see a physician who has some experience with this kind of clinical symptom.