Estate Planning

The Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test

By Hull and Hull LLP

We repeatedly here about the grim details behind Alzheimer's disease. In a previous blog titled 'The Grim Toll of Alzheimer's', I touched on a reported study called The Rising Tide: The Impact of Dementia in Canadian Society.   This study has cited that as our population continues to age, the number of people suffering from Alzheimer's disease is expected to double to 1.25 million within 30 years. Again, another grim statistic.

Today, I blog on another Alzheimer's study, which fortunately does not have such grim details. In a recent article, Lesley Ciarula Taylor states that specialists in Rochester, Minnesota have discovered 'a cheap and easy memory test can predict who will develop Alzheimer's disease with almost perfect accuracy.' The Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test is used to distinguish normal aging memory loss from a degenerative brain disease. 

Taylor states, 'the cost is very low, much lower than an MRI. The hope is to be able to identify the disease as quickly as possible.'

There is no cure for Alzheimer's. Diagnosing the likelihood of being vulnerable may not necessarily lead to a cure, but at least specialists in this area can now ask new questions that potentially could lead to different angles on handling this disease.

Thank you for reading,

Rick Bickhram

Full post as published by Toronto Estate Law Blog on April 12, 2010 (boomark / email).