Alzheimer’s disease is not the only illness that causes memory loss or disorientation. Disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, stroke, or even severe depression can produce similar symptoms in a patient. Often, elderly people have more than one of these problems at the same time.

Precise diagnosis for Alzheimer’s still eludes the medical profession. Although the presence of the disease can be inferred through medical records, a physical, and interviews, there is no way to get a completely accurate diagnosis until an autopsy is performed.

During the autopsy, doctors can examine brain tissue for the tell-tale characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease: microscopic lesions called “senile plaques,” and an excessive amount of nerve cells filled with neurofibrillary tangles.

“When you’re working with Alzheimer’s patients, you never know for certain that they are in fact Alzheimer’s patients,” says Joseph Rogers, director of the Sun Health Research Institute in Sun City.

According to Rogers, scientists continually are searching for a reliable method of diagnosing the disease. Contenders have ranged from a “scratch and sniff” test, based on the fact that Alzheimer’s patients lose the sense of smell early in the disease, to the recently publicized eye drop test, which can only differentiate a person with Alzheimer’s from a normal person.

“I don’t need an eye test to do that. I can just ask you ‘what day is it?’ or ‘who is the President?’” says Rogers. “What we need is a diagnostic to differentiate Alzheimer’s Disease from other forms of dementia.”

In 1995, Rogers may have a chance to find such a test with the help of ASU communication professor William Arnold and his team of research assistants.

Arnold refers to the project as a “communication autopsy.” The work will involve the help of 20 local families who have lost a loved one to a dementia disease.

In a reverse process, the researchers will first interview families about the deceased’s communication behaviors. Armed with this information, they will try to determine which disease the patient suffered from. The researchers then will compare their analyses with actual autopsy data from the Sun City facility, piecing together the communication behaviors that correlate with each disease.

This information will be helpful for caregivers in treating patients with dementia diseases. For example, Arnold’s group has found that while Alzheimer’s patients prefer entertainment such as television and music from the past, a stroke victim does not live in the past and would probably prefer something more current.

The ASU researchers also may use their findings to educate the general public, which is quick to credit Alzheimer’s for memory loss. “As soon as Mom or Grandpa or Uncle Harry begin to forget things, we say ‘it must be Alzheimer’s,’” Arnold says. “But there are several forms of dementia.”—Diane Boudreau

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