BehindTheMedspeak: Late-onset Alzheimer's can be predicted

An eye-opening story by Pam Belluck in last week's New York Times got my attention in a big way.

Key points:

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• Five million Americans are suffering from Alzheimer's and their ranks are projected to surge as baby boomers age.

• A $33.2 million grant, part of the government's national Alzheimer’s plan, will help finance a clinical trial to test a treatment on people 60 to 75 who have no symptoms of the disease, but do have two copies of a gene known to greatly increase the risk of getting it as people age.

• The project will test a drug or placebo on 650 adults. All of the participants will have two copies of the gene ApoE4, having inherited it from both parents.

• Studies have found that more than half the people with two ApoE4 genes will develop Alzheimer's, compared with about one-fourth of people with one copy and 10% of people with no copies. People with two copies also develop symptoms earlier, around age 68, years before most people with one copy and more than a decade before most people without the gene.

• People with two ApoE4 genes make up only about 3% of the population but because they develop the conventional late-onset form of Alzheimer's, they are important to study. About 25 percent of people possess one copy of the gene.

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Until I read this article I had no idea that Alzheimer's was that biologically based and predictable.

The question then becomes, should you get tested for ApoE4 now?

I say no.

If you can't treat, don't test.

All you do is open a world of fear and apprehension that will dog you for the rest of your life.

More knowledge in some cases is not power but, rather, leads to a diminution of power, as your life force dissipates itself in uncontrollable anxiety and fear.