Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri

May 4, 2009 -- Here at the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Washington University in St, Louis, we have the idea that to truly beat Alzheimer's disease, we're going to have to be able to recognize it before there's substantial brain damage. This means likely, we're going to need to develop tests or a series of tests to detect the beginning brain process even before the memory fails or the dementia occurs. We're talking about pre-symptomatic detection.

So we have much of our energies devoted to developing these tests to recognize the beginning onset in perfectly healthy people who ultimately will be destined to develop dementia. Our ultimate goal is to identify these people, introduce effective medications with the hope of preventing the appearance of Alzheimer's symptoms.