Synchrotron pinpoints Alzheimer’s

Engineers are using a synchrotron to test for iron oxide associated with Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

According to The Alzheimer’s Society, dementia affects over 750,000 people in the UK. Diagnosis is usually by a series of memory and mental state tests, and a specific cause is almost impossible to isolate in a living patient.

A new technique can pinpoint and identify the tiny iron oxide particles associated with Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative conditions, such as Hunter’s and Parkinson’s disease. It will provide new information for research into the cause of the diseases and could lead to the first diagnostic procedure for Alzheimer’s in patients while they are alive.

The team of researchers from the University of Florida and Keele University have based their investigation on the fact that regions of the brain affected with these diseases tend to contain unusually high concentrations of iron oxide and other iron-containing particles. The indicative form is hard to distinguish from iron naturally present in healthy brain tissue.