Alzheimer's disease is a frightening and debilitating illness that is characterized by "confusion, memory failure, disorientation, restlessness, amnesia, speech disturbances, inability to carry out purposeful movements, and hallucinations" (Mosby's Medical, Nursing and Allied Heath Dictionary). The condition happens equally to men and women and usually begins in later stages of middle life. There is no known cure and treatment consists of "preventing injury, promoting activity, promoting sleep, and preventing agitation and violence" (Mosby's). In the United States today, about three million people suffer from the disease and in ten years the number is expected to reach 14 million (Beardsley 13). Physicians have no easy way to diagnose a patient with Alzheimer's disease. Researchers can't confirm a patient with the disease until the autopsy. It is important for physicians to develop new methods to accurately detect this serious illness to help with early diagnosis and treatment.
According to a study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, neurologists were able to correctly diagnose Alzheimer's disease in most cases. The autopsies shows that out of 137 patients diagnosed as having probable or possible Alzheimer's, 123 (90%) actually had the disease (Galasko 1392). These results are good, but there is much room for improvement. Ten percent of patients were not correctly diagnosed and most, like President Reagan, had to go through a complex series of tests, which show the illness only after there are serious symptoms (Gorman 89). .
Recently a group of researchers claimed to have found a fairly simple method of detecting the disease. Alzheimer's patients are very sensitive to a drug used by ophthalmologists to enlarge the pupils during eye exams (Gorman 89). By measuring the person's response to the drug, physicians may be able to diagnose the disorder.
It was a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School named Huntington Potter who created the test.
