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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Washington, DC, July 23, 2010 Alzheimer’s disease. Few disorders are as devastating, not just for individual patients but for their families as well. At the current time, however, diagnosis of Alzheimer’s can be made only by an examination of the brain’s structure after the patient has died. And now that drug companies are introducing therapeutic compounds that promise to slow the progression of dementia and other damaging symptoms, the medical community is realizing that it’s more important than ever to come up with markers that can identify Alzheimer’s patients while they can still be treated.
On Sunday, July 25, Dr. John Q. Trojanowski of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine will kick off AACC’s Annual Meeting and Clinical Lab Expo with a plenary session on “The Impact of Biomarkers on the Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease”. During this session, Dr. Trojanowski will also accept AACC’s Wallace H. Coulter Lectureship Award.
In years past, the medical community believed that even severe changes in brain function were a normal part of aging called “senility,” but it is now understood that Alzheimer’s disease is not a normal part of the aging process. Some people develop this condition when they are as young as 40 years of age, although the disease is most common in persons over the age of 65. Population studies suggest that approximately 10% of persons over 65 years of age may have Alzheimer’s disease and up to 50% of persons over the age of 85 may be affected.
According to AACC member Dr. Leslie Shaw, a colleague and collaborator with Dr. Trojanowski at the University of Pennsylvania,”Validated biomarker tests will improve the focus of Alzheimer’s clinical trials, enrolling patients at earlier stages of the disease to find treatments that can at least delay, and perhaps stop, neurodegeneration. In addition, prevention trials can test methods to delay or block mild cognitive impairment from converting to full-blown Alzheimer’s.”
AACC, based in Washington, DC, is a leading professional society dedicated to improving healthcare through laboratory medicine. Its over 9,000 members are clinical laboratory professionals, physicians, research scientists, and others involved in developing tests and directing laboratory operations. AACC brings this community together with programs that advance knowledge, expertise, and innovation. AACC’s Annual Meeting, which attracts around 20,000 delegates, is the world’s largest conference on laboratory medicine and technology.
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