For people with a common genetic variation, researchers have
discovered signs of the possible onset of Alzheimer's before a
patient would be clinically diagnosed by a doctor. In people
with the ApoE4 gene variation, one previously implicated as
affecting the likelihood of Alzheimer's, researchers have been
able to pinpoint some signs of memory loss beginning in the
person's mid- to late-50s -- without the patient having full-
blown Alzheimer's disease or dementia. "[One could argue] we
really captured for the first time the onset of Alzheimer's
disease," explained Dr. Richard Caselli, a neurologist at the
Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz. "What's passing as normal aging
itself correlates with the most common genetic risk factor for
Alzheimer's disease," he said, adding that the symptoms are
noticeable in a clinical setting, but not in everyday life.
"It's not the sort of thing that you can look at somebody or
they can look at themselves and know." Researchers caution that
when in interpreting the findings, one