via AP News:

‘The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared four blood tests to help doctors diagnose whether Alzheimer’s — not another kind of dementia or something else — is behind someone’s memory problems or other cognitive symptoms. Some laboratories and online services offer their own tests. Faster diagnosis can help people with early-stage Alzheimer’s qualify for drugs that can modestly slow the worsening of their symptoms.

Yet dementia specialists say people without symptoms also seek those tests even though they’re neither approved nor recommended for that population.

For now, “the worried well should not be getting those tests” outside of a research study, stressed testing expert Nicholas Ashton, of Arizona’s Banner Health. > Instead, focus on addressing potentially preventable brain risks. One large study found people who reached middle age without high blood pressure, diabetes and smoking lived dementia-free for a lot longer — nearly 13 years longer — than people with all three of those common health problems in their 50s…’