The team of Shraddha Sapkota, a neuroscience graduate student at the University of Alberta, investigated the presence of metabolites in saliva. Metabolites are released by the molecules that may serve as an indicator of metabolic alteration in the brain that could tell if one is suffering from early stages of Alzheimer's disease.
The researchers used liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry to evaluatr the samples. They were able to determine, which among the groups were actually aging normally, suffering from mild cognitive impairment or already suffering from Alzheimer's. Sapkota concluded that higher levels of specific metabolites in the saliva are linked to declining cognitive skills.
"So that's promising. What that does is it tells a physician in a regular doctor's office that this person should get more testing," Maria C Carrillo, chief science officer at the Alzheimer's Association, praised Sapkota's findings.
However, scientists are still skeptical about the result of this new research and thought it needs further research because the findings could only be preliminary.
"The idea is good. And I hope someday we'll be able to do that. But we've had very bad luck with these panels of biomarker," Creighton H. "Tony" Phelps, director of the National Institute on Aging's Alzheimer's Disease Centers program, said.
Sapkota and team's study was just one of the biomarkers research presented last Sunday at the opening day of the five-day Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Washington, D.C.
Around 5 million people are diagnosed with Alzheimer's in the U.S. alone and it is expected that the figure will increase to 13.5 million by 2050. More studies are now being conducted to find ways of how to accurately detect Alzheimer's at an earlier stage. This would make it easier for doctors to determine the appropriate interventions that might delay or even prevent the development of dementia.
