Alzheimer's disease experts are revamping the way doctors diagnose patients with the progressive brain disorder — the most common type of dementia — by devising a seven-point rating scale based on cognitive and biological changes in the patient.
The proposed guidelines, unveiled by experts on Sunday in a report issued at an Alzheimer's Association conference in Amsterdam, embrace a numerical staging system assessing disease progression similar to the one used in cancer diagnoses. They also eliminate the use of terms like mild, moderate and severe.
The revamp — replacing guidelines issued in 2018 — was prompted by the increased availability of tests detecting key Alzheimer's-related proteins such as beta amyloid in the blood and new treatments that require confirmation of disease pathology prior to use.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.