Giving Compass' Take:

• This Futurity post reports on recent research that shows healthy adults who describe autobiographical memories in less detail could be a warning sign for Alzheimer's.

• The earlier we are able to detect Alzheimer's, the higher the chance of developing effective treatments, so any early marker discovery like this could herald a breakthrough. But, like, anything related to disease research, more resources are needed.

• Here's why finding a cure for Alzheimer’s is only the first step.

Researchers administered an “autobiographical memory” test to a group of 35 healthy adults, about half of whom carry the gene variant APOE e4 — a known genetic risk factor that nearly doubles the chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

As a group, those with the genetic risk described memories with much less detail than those without it.

Sometimes called a disease with a clinically silent beginning, Alzheimer’s disease is difficult to detect early even though changes in the brain related to the disease may begin to happen years or even decades before an individual starts to exhibit memory difficulties, researchers say.

“This raises a huge challenge for developing effective treatments,” says Matthew Grilli, an assistant professor and director of the Human Memory Laboratory in the University of Arizona psychology department and lead author of the paper in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

“The hope is that in the near future we will have drugs and other treatments that could potentially slow down, stop, and even reverse some of these brain changes that we think are the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. The problem is that if we can’t detect who has these hallmarks early enough, these treatments may not be fully effective, if at all.”

Read the full article about autobiographical memory and Alzheimer’s risk by Alexis Blue at Futurity.