Landmark meeting discusses goal of detecting Alzheimer disease before symptoms appear

This past October, 214 researchers from the U.S., Europe, and Australia, as well as representatives of families with aggressive genetic forms of Alzheimer disease (AD), met at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, to devote two intense days of talks and discussion to their goal of detecting this disease before symptoms appear. By a growing consensus, defining the "silent" phase of AD has become the field's central challenge if it is to modernize drug testing and lay the groundwork for AD prevention trials.

Presymptomatic carriers of deterministic AD mutations arguably harbor a unique potential to solve this challenge for all of AD. The St. Louis conference pulled together the latest research advances in this area. More than that, it also served as a chance for the far-flung participants in the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN) to push their ambitious project forward. In short, initial numbers on enrollment, passionate family input on counseling, community building and data privacy, and budding plans to offer a clinical trial to participating families were the main upshot of these conversations.

The Alzheimer Research Forum's Gabrielle Strobel reports on this landmark meeting in a seven-part series. The stories are:

Scientists, Families Target Preclinical Detection, Trials
The Family View—What Do Study Volunteers Want From DIAN?
Cognition Pre-dementia—Like eFAD, Like LOAD?
Biomarkers Pre-dementia—Like eFAD, Like LOAD?
Is Rare Familial Alzheimer's a Model for the Millions?
Imaging Preclinical AD—Can You See it Coming in the Brain?
An eFAD Prevention Trial—One Man's View

To read the full report, go to:
http://www.alzforum.org/new/detail.asp?id=2264