Today the only sure way to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease is to find out whether there are plagues and tangles in the brain tissue. There is no proof positive diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease before a person dies. A physician can only make a diagnosis of “possible” Alzheimer’s disease while the person is still alive.

An early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease helps patients and their families. It provides a chance to treat the symptoms and slowing the progression of the disease. Unfortunately the diagnosis is established only after the clinical symptoms become to impede the patients social functioning.

Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is troublesome because there is no specific biological marker and no one diagnostic test. It is diagnosed by a process of some examinations and assessments and this process may take more than one day. Alzheimer’s disease assessments and tests include the following steps in general:

• Patient’s history. Information about medical problems, medications.
• Physical examination
• Mental status evaluation. Mini-Mental State Examination which contains questions such as “What is the date?”, “What city are we in?”. Another step of the test is to follow a series of simple instructions.
• Laboratory tests. Serum TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone), B12, folate, complete blood counts, urine or spinal fluid, etc.
• Neuropsychological evaluations which test person’s mood and other psychological factors such as emotional status, reasoning skills, memory.
• Brain scannig with one of the followings: CT (Computer Tomography), MRI (Magnetic Resonans Imaging), PET (Positron Emission Tomography), or SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computer Tomography).
• Genetic testing, and other tests which investigate the proteins involve in the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease: CSF (CerebroSpinal Fluid) tau, Amyloid Beta, or their combination, urine, or CSF neural thread protein.

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