A groundbreaking study has emerged, capable of predicting an individual’s lifetime risk of memory loss. This research highlights a silent biological precursor to Alzheimer’s disease that is already affecting numerous seemingly healthy adults.

The study, which monitored more than 5,000 participants over 20 years, provides a clear insight: an increased level of a particular protein linked to Alzheimer’s in the brain correlates with a heightened risk of dementia.

This marks the first occasion that a team from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, has quantified the potential risk of dementia in individuals who currently display normal memory and cognitive functions.

The study specifically examines how the hidden biological mechanisms of Alzheimer’s, particularly the accumulation of amyloid protein in the brain, influence a person’s lifetime risk of cognitive decline and dementia.

By evaluating brain scans alongside factors such as age, gender, and genetic information, the researchers have developed a predictive tool. This interactive web tool allows individuals to assess their personalized risk for cognitive decline.

Users can input their age, gender, APOE ε4 gene status (which is known to elevate dementia risk), and results from an amyloid PET scan. The tool then calculates the risk of developing Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI)—a precursor to Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia—over 30 years, broken into five-year intervals, and throughout their lifetime.

The latest findings come on the heels of news of a novel pill in trials that clear out toxic proteins in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy Body dementia and Parkinson’s disease. 

A groundbreaking study can now predict a person’s lifetime risk of severe memory loss, showing that a hidden biological process of Alzheimer’s is already active in many healthy adults who currently show no symptoms (stock)

According to a 2018 review by the American Academy of Neurology, the prevalence of MCI steadily increases with age.

Nearly seven percent of people 60 to 64 have MCI, 8.4 percent of those 65 to 69 have it, 10.1 percent of people 70 to 74, nearly 15 percent of people 75 to 79 and 25 percent of people 80 to 84.

The research team set out to better understand the lifetime risk of developing MCI among cognitively unimpaired adults over 50 who have abnormal Alzheimer’s biomarkers, like elevated amyloid. 

They used official Mayo Clinic data to track cognitive aging among Minnesota residents. Over 5,100 were cognitively unimpaired at the start, while 700 had MCI. 

The research team analyzed a specific subset of 2,332 participants who had their brain amyloid levels measured at the start. 

Within this group, 2,067 were cognitively unimpaired and 265 had MCI. 

Those 265 individuals represented a portion of the larger study’s 700 participants who began with MCI, allowing researchers to directly link their amyloid levels to their future risk of cognitive decline. 

Researchers calculated the lifetime risk of MCI and dementia by tracking the participants’ health status over many years through repeated study visits and medical records, noting whenever someone transitioned from being cognitively healthy to developing MCI, then to dementia or if they passed away.

 The charts show that for 65-year-olds, the lifetime risk of both mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia rises steeply as amyloid buildup (measured in centiloids) increases, with higher risks for women and individuals carrying the APOE ε4 gene

The graph for dementia lifetime risk reveals a stark, upward curve directly tied to amyloid buildup. It shows that for 65-year-olds, even a moderate amount of this brain protein significantly elevates the chance of developing dementia in their lifetime.

The study used amyloid PET imaging to measure the amount of Alzheimer’s-related amyloid protein in people’s brains and converted these scan results into a universal score in centiloids. 

The analysis used a sophisticated statistical model that incorporated all these data points to calculate lifetime risk percentages, or the probability of developing dementia before death, for individuals based on their specific age, amyloid levels, sex and genetic profile. 

The study revealed that a person’s lifetime risk of developing MCI is powerfully influenced by their biological sex and the amount of amyloid protein in their brain.

For a 75-year-old man carrying the high-risk APOE ε4 gene, the chance of developing MCI in his remaining years was 56 percent if he had low amyloid, but that risk surged to 77 percent if his amyloid levels were high.

This pattern was even more pronounced in women. 

A 75-year-old woman with the same genetic profile faced a 69 percent lifetime risk with low amyloid, which jumped dramatically to 84 percent, if she had high amyloid buildup.

And for dementia, that same 75-year-old woman with high amyloid and the APOE ε4 gene had a 69 percent lifetime risk of eventually being diagnosed with the condition. 

A 75-year-old man with high amyloid levels and the APOE ε4 gene had a 56.5 percent lifetime risk of being diagnosed with dementia. 

The results were published in the journal The Lancet Neurology.  

An estimated seven million Americans are currently living with dementia, including more than six million with Alzheimer’s disease specifically.

As the population of older adults and seniors has grown due to the aging of the large Baby Boomer generation and increases in life expectancy, estimates for the burden of dementia have been estimated at 14 million.

The researchers said: ‘The risk of MCI is relevant because any degree of impairment, not just dementia, represents a substantial decline in quality of life.

‘MCI also denotes the current clinical impairment threshold that is sufficient to qualify for… treatment.’

While the recent Alzheimer’s study provides a straightforward way to predict lifetime risk based on amyloid ‘gunk’ in the brain, a new experimental pill named RTR242 aims to combat that problem directly. 

The pill is designed to clear out amyloid by reviving the brain’s natural cleaning process. 

The new pill offers a potential future where someone with a high lifetime risk score could one day have access to a treatment that actively works to reverse the underlying biology of neurodegenerative diseases.