Studies Find Ways to Diagnose, Treat Alzheimer’s Several potential advances. First, positron emission tomography (PET) scanning of the brain apparently shows a distinctly different pattern of brain activity in Alzheimer’s Disease than in other brain dysfunctions with which it may be confused. Up ’til now, no diagnostic technique short of autopsy has been shown to improve on the educated guess we make to diagnose the condition.

A definitive diagnosis might be important if there were therapies that target the specific disease process in Alzheimer’s, which appears to be the deposition of rogue proteins in the brain in characteristic configurations called “plaques” and “tangles”. These progressively destroy normal brain tissue and interfere with cognitive functioning. The disease is incurable and inevitably fatal. A team at Johns Hopkins have now identified the enzyme that is the major player in forming plaques. Growing mice genetically engineered to be deficient in this enzyme will give a first approximation to whether blocking the enzyme could be a potential preventive or therapeutic measure agains Alzheimer’s, or whether it would have any adverse consequences.