In my last post, I talked about a handy booklet available for caregivers at the Alzheimer’s Family Day Center. I just finished reading another valuable resource, a book by Frank Fuerst, published in 2007, Alzheimer’s Care with Dignity. This is definitely a handbook worth owning for anyone caring for someone with Alzheimer’s disease. Frank Fuerst shares his 17 years of experience caring for this wife. In his Preface, he says:

After doctors diagnosed June Fuerst with early onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD), her husband attended lectures and read every available book and article on the subject. He followed most advice and found what worked, and what did not. He kept daily notes. As the disease progressed, he found himself in uncharted territory and relied on his own creativity and a process of trial and error. He realized that some information he needed was not available from any source.

Alzheimer’s Care with Dignity is not a big book — just over 200 pages — but loaded with helpful information. It’s an amazing book to read, but more importantly, it’s an essential handbook to have at your finger tips. Caregiving for an Alzheimer’s patient is an extremely challenging and daunting task, particularly in the later stages and unfortunately, everyone is different so that the suggestions he makes may not work in your situation. Facetiously, he says of the job:

• On call — 24 hours each day
• Regular pay — None
• Overtime pay — None
• Holidays — None
• Sick time — None at night, weekends or holidays
• Time off — None without a paid replacement
• Ambidexterity — Mandatory
• Needing more than two hands — Mandatory

I will introduce other chapters in future posts. If you cannot afford to buy the book, check to see if it’s in your local library.

UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center

As stated in the previous post, today there are no reliable tests to determine conclusively if a person has Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, there are several breakthrough tests on the horizon that have us hopeful that soon we may have an accurate test to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. In the last post, I covered what’s happening at the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute (BRNI) at West Virginia University and Inverness Medical Innovations. In this post I will report on the breakthrough test for Alzheimer’s disease at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

At UCLA, researchers have developed a blood test that would measure the amount of amyloid beta that is being absorbed by immune cells in the blood. If the immune system isn’t adequately clearing amyloid beta, it may indicate Alzheimer’s risk. According to Gen News, the UCLA scientists took blood samples and isolated monocytes including amyloid beta. The monocytes were incubated overnight with amyloid beta, which was labeled with a fluorescent marker. Using flow cytometry, the investigators then measured the amount of amyloid beta ingested by the immune cells.

The 18 Alzheimer’s disease patients in the study showed the least uptake of amyloid beta. The healthy control group, which consisted of 14 university professors, had the highest uptake.

The method was able to distinguish the Alzheimer’s disease patients with adequate sensitivity and specificity and the results were found to be positive in 94% of patients and negative for the entire control group. Additionally, the data was positive in 60% of participants who suffered from mild cognitive impairment.

Milan Fiala, M.D., is the lead author of the UCLA study, which appeared in the May 2009 issue of the Journal of Neuroimmunology.