We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about how everything from brushing your teeth to climbing the stairs can reveal early symptoms of dementia.
But scientists now think some signs that are seemingly unrelated to the condition can appear much, much sooner than previously thought.
In a study by University College London (UCL), published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association in February of this year, experts found that: “People at risk of Alzheimer’s disease have impaired spatial navigation prior to problems with other cognitive functions, including memory.”
This was seen among 100 patients who were “25 years younger than their estimated age of dementia onset.”
How did they test it?
They gave 43-to-66-year-old participants who were at a higher physiological, genetic, or lifestyle risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease VR sets and asked them to navigate the virtual space.
Participants were all part of PREVENT, “a multi-centre prospective cohort study in the UK and Ireland that aims to examine midlife risk factors for dementia and identify and describe the earliest indices of disease development.”
No matter the scale of their predisposition to dementia, those who were at a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s tended to do worse at the navigating task ― regardless of how good their other cognitive scores were.
The impairment was observed more often in men than it was in women.
The study’s first author, neuroscientist Dr. Coco Newton, said, “Our results indicated that this type of navigation behaviour change might represent the very earliest diagnostic signal in the Alzheimer’s disease continuum – when people move from being unimpaired to showing manifestation of the disease.”
Though the results don’t definitively prove that one causes the other, the link could help to close a research “gap” in dementia research, Newton added.
Does this mean I’ll definitely get dementia if I have spatial navigation difficulties?
No.
Speaking to Medical News Today, Dr. Douglas Scharre, a professor of clinical neurology and psychiatry, said, “We do not know, based on this study, that this technology can offer an earlier diagnosis as we do not know if any of these individuals will or will not ever get [Alzheimer’s].”
Dr. Richard Oakley, associate director of research and innovation at Alzheimer’s Society (an organisation which partly funded the study) said, “This innovative technology is a long way from becoming a diagnostic test, but it does provide more evidence about the role of navigational abilities as an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease.”
He added, “More work is needed to develop this technology, but it will be exciting to see how this research may offer a way to spot disease-specific changes early and help people living with dementia in future.”