Test Lets Volunteers Check Alzheimer's Risk, Join Clinical Trials

The www.aptwebstudy.org website allows volunteers to participate in clinical trials of Alzheimer's drugs and have their cognitive abilities monitored under the supervision of researchers that include San Diego's Alzheimer's Therapeutic Research Institute (ATRI), reports Medical Xpress . People 50 and older are invited to enroll in the screening, says ATRI Director Dr. Paul Aisen. The initiative is designed to identify apparently normal people at higher risk for Alzheimer's who can then be administered experimental therapies. Aisen says volunteers will fill out a questionnaire about their assessment of their cognitive abilities and then take a test to evaluate those abilities. The test will be repeated over time to look for early signs of deterioration. Aisen notes he wants to get "tens of thousands" of volunteers signed up, and the goal of the project is to furnish a large pool of ready volunteers who can quickly be enrolled in any Alzheimer's trial they qualify for. This should accelerate the rollout of new trials and hopefully result in faster answers about whether new Alzheimer's therapies work. People participating in clinical trials must be willing to travel to one of 35 sites in the U.S. where they can be tested in person. Aisen says those tests will involve either a brain scan or a spinal tap to look for beta amyloid. "If we see that your scores are steadily declining, even though you have absolutely no symptoms, that tells us a lot about the risk of there being amyloid in your brain," he notes.