New approaches for measuring biomarkers for diagnostics and a sophisticated system for integrating the information analytically are the achievements of a team of EU-funded researchers. This team has developed a new system, which offers researchers an objective method for measuring the patient's state of Alzheimer's disease.

The PREDICTAD ('From patient data to personalised healthcare in Alzheimer's disease') project, which is backed with €2.89 million under the 'Information and communication technologies' (ICT) Theme of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), kicked off in 2008 and is scheduled to end in November 2011. The team has developed objective indicator to diagnose Alzheimer's disease at the earliest stage possible.

One of the most common features of Alzheimer's disease is atrophy in the mediotemporal lobe, for that reason a feature is loss of tissue. In this way, the team has managed to develop efficient tools for measuring the size of the hippocampus, the atrophy rate of the hippocampus, and two modern approaches based on comparing patient data with previously diagnosed cases available in large databases.

Under 2011 International Year for Research on Alzheimer and neurodegenerative diseases, the EU commited to prevention in research against Alzheimer disease on January 2011. Earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease is important. Within this context, it has been calculated that delaying the onset of the disease by five years would halve all costs of Alzheimer's disease, and delaying onset and progression by only one year would reduce the number of Alzheimer's cases by about 10%. Currently, costs for this disease alone are equivalent to around 1% of the global gross domestic product (GDP), in addition experts believe the number of people diagnosed with Alzheimer's will grow two-fold by 2030.

The PREDICTAD consortium are also investigating another imaging technology called positron emission tomography (PET). A new tracer created specifically for Alzheimer's diagnostics has the potential to help experts in diagnosing this debilitating disease in the early stages, according to the researchers.