Sniffing Out The Test for Alzheimer’s Disease

A recent smell test developed has the potential to screen patients for Alzheimer’s Disease.  Currently, over five million people are living with Alzheimer’s. The Alzheimer’s Association notes that, “one in three seniors dies with Alzheimer’s.” The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine recently published, “Sniff Test May Be Useful in Diagnosing Early Alzheimer’s Disease,” which has been republished by Science Daily. In the early stages of Alzheimer’s, patients unfortunately lose a large portion of their ability to smell. This test “appears to be useful for diagnosing a pre-dementia condition called mild cognitive impairment, MCI.” This trial was done by David R. Roalf, PhD at UPenn.

The trial was done on 728 elderly people with two tests; one on cognitive abilities, and the other was the sniff test. Roalf said that, “these results suggest that a simple odor identification test can be a useful supplementary tool for clinically categorizing MCI and Alzheimer’s.” Currently these tests take between five to eight minutes. Roalf hopes the time it takes will lessen. He hopes to, “investigate whether protein markers of Alzheimer’s, which are present in the olfactory region of the brain before dementia occurs, can be detected in nasal fluid to provide an even earlier warning of the disease process.” More information is needed before a test can be implemented in Neurologist’s offices, or even becomes standard medical practice.