Petition All over 65s should be allowed to have preventative scans for signs of Alzheimer’s Disease & treated with drugs even before the onset of symptoms

Recently monoclonal antibodies for amyloid plaques or vaccine have been found to clear away amyloid plaques by a third within 6 months in the brains of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) sufferers in clinical trials. Such treatment can delay onset of AD by 5 years. Neuroimaging techniques involving positron emission tomography (PET), single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), structural MRI gamma scanning can detect AD process around 3 years before the clinical onset of cognitive impairment. The physiological changes of AD are the deposition in the brain of extracellular spherical amyloid (Aβ) plaques & surrounded by intracellular tau tangles. Aβ plaques & tau tangles are notably found in the cerebral cortex, hippocampus, limbic system & subcortical nuclei of the brains of AD sufferers.