Testing sense of smell may give early warning of Alzheimer's risk

Conclusion Sense of smell varies greatly from one person to another, and tends to decline as we get older. Lots of people can lose their sense of smell – either temporarily or permanently – after illness or an accident. Having a poor sense of smell does not mean you're going to get Alzheimer's disease, and that's not what this study found. People who already had Alzheimer's disease, not surprisingly, did poorly at identifying smells. But smell detection ability alone did not differentiate between healthy people, those with some memory concerns, and those with mild cognitive impairment. Only the POEM test, which looked at people's ability to both identify and remember smells, could do that. For people without dementia or mild cognitive impairment, those who did less well at remembering smells compared with their ability to identify them were more likely to have previously identified risk factors for Alzheimer's disease. These include a genetic variant more common in those with Alzheimer's disease and physical evidence of some degree of tissue thinning. But we don't know whether these people did go on to get dementia, as the study only looked at a snapshot in time, not at what happened to people over time. It's important to remember, too, that this was a relatively small study. We need to have these POEM test results validated by larger studies that follow people over time before we can say whether it is a useful way of identifying older people likely to develop ...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Neurology Older people Source Type: news