Eye health may indicate Alzheimer's risk 12 years in advance

A eye health It can be an important indication of brain health. A new study, published in the scientific journal Scientific Reportsshowed that the Loss of visual sensitivity may be an early sign of Alzheimer's and can manifest up to 12 years before the disease is diagnosed.

O study, led by researchers at Loughborough University, in the United Kingdom, was carried out with 8,623 healthy people living in Norfolk, England. They were followed for several years and, at the end of the study, 537 participants had developed dementia. From this, it was possible to observe which factors could be associated with the diagnosis.

At the beginning of the study, researchers performed a test of visual sensitivity, which is a person's ability to detect and process visual information accurately and efficiently. To do this, they needed to press a button as soon as they saw a triangle forming in a field of moving dots.

According to the researchers, people who would later develop dementia took longer to notice the triangle forming on the screen than people who did not develop the disease.

Visual problems may be an early indicator of Alzheimer's

According to an article written by the study authors and published in The Conversationvisual problems can be an early indicator of cognitive decline, since the accumulation of amyloid plaques (a characteristic of Alzheimer's) can first affect the areas of the brain related to vision.

Therefore, vision tests can find cognitive deficits even before memory tests, which can detect signs of Alzheimer's when the disease is already progressing.

According to researchers, there are several aspects of visual processing that can be affected by Alzheimer's, such as the ability to see object contours and discern colors. Furthermore, there are evidence which suggest that people with dementia may process the faces of new people inefficiently.

In an interview with Medical News TodayEef Hogervorst, chair of Biological Psychology and director of Dementia Research at Loughborough University, and lead author of the study, low scores on visual sensitivity tests — carried out in the study in question — may indicate a future risk of dementia on average 12 years before diagnosis, especially when the exam is combined with other tests of memory and global cognitive functioning.

Now, researchers intend to investigate the potential of visual sensitivity tests as a monitoring tool for Alzheimer's.