An ambitious study designed to detect Alzheimer's Disease before symptoms even show is already facing it's first big obstacle- a lack of volunteer patients.
It's the largest clinical study ever done on the disease. Nearly 500 patients would undergo MRI scans, PET scans and spinal taps, CBS News reports, in hopes of developing the first test to find the disease before a potential patient even knows there is a problem.
Researchers are looking at several factors to develop a test for the disease. They plan to study how a brain with Alzheimer's shrinks over time and to how detect when toxic proteins in the brain build up. They will do this by looking at thousands of images.
Nationwide, the studies are short thousands of volunteers. Something that might seem surprising considering that 5.4 million Americans have the disease according to the Alzheimer's Association. The study is expected to be delayed by at least 1 year.
