Question:
Is there any way to diagnose if a person has the beginning stages ofalzheimers? There must be some way to diagnose it once a person has it, sincethey definately say a person has the disease. Am curious to find out if thereis a test to determine if a person has it. Am really not very informed aboutthis at all.

Can anyone give me some suggestions???

Answer: Actually there isn't. A long battery of clinical tests plus sometesting of apoE4 alleles may get you to 90% certainty, but no farther.Short of an autopsy the best you can do to do better than that is a PETscan. These are available only at a few places, such as UCLA, since acyclotron is needed to make the short-lived positron emitting isotopeof fluorine (F-18). Some other places might be willing to do a SPECTscan for you, which isn't as good as PET, but measures many of the samethings, and may improve the diagnosis.

Ultimately, though, a demented person is a demented person. Oncethey're on aspirin and vitamin E, there's not a lot you can do for themif they don't have some mass lesion on CT scan. DifferentiatingAlzheimer's from the other dementing illnesses is not that useful.