Cheap Alzheimer's test made from peanut butter and ruler, researchers report
Alzheimer's disease is difficult to diagnose before symptoms start showing up, because there is no single test that can definitively determine whether a person has the degenerative brain disease.
Could a scoop of peanut butter and a ruler become that elusive test?
That's what researchers at the University of Florida's McKnight Brain Institute Center for Smell and Taste are hoping. They found patients with early-stage Alzheimer's disease had more difficulty smelling peanut butter held at short distances from their nose than people without the disease.
"At the moment, we can use this test to confirm diagnosis," graduate student Jennifer Stamps, who led the research, said in a statement . "But we plan to study patients with mild cognitive impairment to see if this test might be used to predict which patients are going to get Alzheimer's disease."
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I wonder why peanut butter is the scent that makes the difference? This is an interesting finding.