More Than 5 Million Americans Now Have Alzheimer's

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Scientists are even now reporting one of those advances. An international team of researchers has used PET scans to distinguish living, healthy brains from the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Right now, Alzheimer's can only be definitely identified upon autopsy.

The new brain scans relied on a compound called AV-1, which binds to the beta-amyloid proteins that build up in the brain and are the hallmark of the disease.

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"People with Alzheimer's had a significant 'signal' in the brain in areas known from autopsy where amyloid tends to deposit," said Alan Carpenter, vice president of business development at Avid Radiopharmaceuticals in Philadelphia, which licensed the compound.

The results, presented Sunday at the 8th International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease in Salzburg, Austria, hold out the hope that doctors will one day be able to better diagnose the disease. Researchers might also use the technology to judge the effectiveness of drugs that target the amyloid beta protein.

But there is still a long way to go, one expert said.

"This is another brick in the yellow brick road, but it's not the end," said Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. "We should be excited that this is moving technology along, but it's not ready for clinical application. Still, the more studies like this we have, the closer we get to it being useful to patients."

According to Kennedy, compounds currently being tested, including this one, need to be much more specific and more sensitive before they can be considered reliable.

In addition, doctors need ways to predict who will develop the disease, not just distinguishing who currently has it compared with who doesn't, he added.

Diagnosis of Alzheimer's is a notoriously tricky affair and is never 100 percent definite until an autopsy is performed. "It's done with great difficulty," Carpenter said. "Autopsy is the only definitive means."

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