They’re looking at the size of your blood vessels to foretell your future.
Alzheimer’s is a complicated disease without a present cure and it’s estimated that about 1 in 10 people 65 years of age and older in the U.S are currently battling it.
Dementia is normally diagnosed after the illness has been brewing for a while. This can happen when there are mounting concerns and signs that something isn’t right with a patient’s thinking or behavior. But obvious outward symptoms are now just part of the route toward diagnosis. Researchers from Northwestern University have now found clues that lie in our eyes.
Detecting reduced blood capillaries in the back of the eye could be a new, noninvasive way to spot early cognitive impairment, researchers say.
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Using an infrared camera, scientists can find these small changes. Essentially, by looking at the size of your capillaries in your eyes, they are “seeing” what’s going on inside your brain.
“Once our results are validated, this approach could potentially provide an additional type of biomarker to identify individuals at high risk of progressing to Alzheimer’s,” said Dr. Amani Fawzi, a leader in the study.
Dr. Fawzi says he feels new Alzheimer’s therapies could result from the findings, and help slow down the disease.
What else can your eyes reveal? Diabetes, stroke and high blood pressure are also said to show themselves here.
For more on Alzheimer’s and how science is fighting it, click here.
