Early detection of Alzheimer's disease: new diagnostic criteria

Abstract

There has been unprecedented growth of scientific knowledge about Alzheimer's disease (AD). The description of distinctive and reliable biomarkers that are now available through structural brain imaging with magnetic resonance imaging, molecular neuroimaging with positron emission tomography, and cerebrospinal fluid analyses, and a better definition of the clinical profile of amnestic disorders that occur early in the course of the disease, make it possible to identify AD with high accuracy, even in the early stages of the disease. Accordingly, new criteria for the diagnosis have been proposed that capture both the prodromal and the more advanced dementia stages of the disease in the same diagnostic framework.