Scientists from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have made a special robot that can guess if a person may get Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s disease, or AD, makes people forget things and can cause other problems. It mostly affects older people.
The scientists’ robot uses people’s genetic information – information that’s hidden inside our bodies in tiny building blocks called genes. Let’s find out how they did it!
What are Genes and What is Alzheimer’s Disease?
First, let’s understand two important things – genes and Alzheimer’s disease.
Genes: Imagine you’re building a LEGO tower. You’d use different bricks to create the tower, right? Similarly, our body is like a big tower, and the tiny bricks are our genes.
Genes carry instructions for building our bodies. They decide our height, eye color, and much more.
Alzheimer’s Disease (AD): Now, think about what would happen if you misplaced some LEGO bricks or used the wrong ones. The tower might not look or function as you expected. Alzheimer’s disease is similar.
It happens when something goes wrong in our brain, causing people to forget things and have trouble with daily tasks.
The Mystery of Alzheimer’s and Genes
AD can be caused by wrong instructions in our genes. These wrong instructions are present when we’re born and don’t change throughout our life.
This means that if we look closely at our genes, we can predict if we might get AD. Some genetic tests are already approved, but they only look at one gene.
AD is usually caused by many wrong instructions, not just one. This is why we need better tests!
How Robots Can Help
The team at HKUST led by Prof. Nancy Ip and Prof. Chen Lei used a type of robot called artificial intelligence, or AI, which can learn and solve problems.
They trained the AI to look at many genes at once. Their AI is one of the first to estimate the chances of getting AD for people of European and Chinese descent.
It could correctly tell if a person has AD and group them based on the risk of getting the disease. This AI could predict the lifetime risk of getting AD with more than 70% accuracy!
The Early Bird Catches the Worm
Currently, doctors diagnose AD with tests and brain scans. But by the time people show symptoms, it’s often too late for the best treatments.
So, catching AD early can help doctors come up with better plans to manage the disease. If we combine the AI with genetic testing, we can predict AD much earlier.
Looking into the Future
The scientists believe their work will speed up the process of finding who is at risk of AD. They also think their AI will provide more knowledge about how AD starts and progresses.
Prof. Chen Lei said that AI could help address challenges in different health care areas. The team is now working on improving the AI.
They hope to make it a standard tool for finding out who might get AD in the future.
Isn’t it amazing how robots can help solve such big mysteries?
Who knew our genes could tell us so much about our health! Just remember, whether it’s building a LEGO tower or understanding our health, every tiny piece is important!
If you care about Alzheimer’s, please read studies about Vitamin D deficiency linked to Alzheimer’s, vascular dementia, and Oral cannabis extract may help reduce Alzheimer’s symptoms.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies about Vitamin B9 deficiency linked to higher dementia risk, and results showing flavonoid-rich foods could improve survival in Parkinson’s disease.
The study was published in Communications Medicine.
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