Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most feared conditions linked to aging. It slowly damages memory and thinking skills, and once symptoms appear, the changes are often hard to reverse.
For many families, the hardest part is not knowing who will develop the disease or when it might begin.
But researchers at the Mayo Clinic have created a new tool that could change this. Their work suggests that it may be possible to estimate a person’s risk of developing memory problems long before any signs appear.
The study was published in The Lancet Neurology and is based on decades of research from the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging, one of the biggest and most detailed long-term studies on brain health in the world. This project has been tracking thousands of people in Olmsted County, Minnesota, following their health over many years.
Because researchers can also access medical records even after people stop actively taking part, they can see exactly who develops memory decline or dementia. Few studies in the world have data as complete and long‑running as this.
The new tool predicts the risk of mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, and dementia. MCI is a stage between normal aging and dementia. People with MCI can still live independently and manage their daily lives, but they start to notice problems with memory or thinking. Many people with MCI eventually develop dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.
The Mayo Clinic team found important patterns. Women have a higher lifetime risk than men of developing both dementia and MCI. People who carry the common genetic variant called APOE ε4 also face a higher risk.
This gene has been known for years to increase the chances of Alzheimer’s disease, but the new model shows more clearly how much it adds to lifetime risk.
To understand Alzheimer’s risk, it helps to know what happens inside the brain. Two proteins are at the center of the disease: amyloid and tau. Amyloid forms sticky plaques between brain cells, while tau forms tangles inside the cells.
These changes slowly damage the brain. Recently, new medications have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that can clear amyloid from the brain. These drugs can slow the disease if given early, especially in the MCI stage. As a result, knowing who is likely to develop MCI in the future has become more important than ever.
The Mayo Clinic’s new prediction model looks at several factors together: a person’s age, sex, APOE genetic type, and the level of amyloid in their brain. Amyloid levels are measured using PET scans.
Of all the factors studied, amyloid levels had the strongest effect on predicting a person’s lifetime risk of MCI and dementia. This means amyloid buildup may begin many years before symptoms and may silently shape a person’s future risk.
Researchers explained that this model could work much like cholesterol tests do for heart disease. A doctor can look at someone’s cholesterol numbers and estimate how likely they are to develop heart problems in the future.
Similarly, this brain‑risk model might one day help doctors and patients understand when to begin treatment or make lifestyle changes that could delay memory problems.
Another important finding from the study came from comparing participants who stayed active in the study with those who stopped participating. The people who dropped out later had double the rate of dementia compared with those who continued.
This suggests that people who begin experiencing health problems may withdraw from studies, making typical research less accurate. Because the Mayo Clinic study could continue tracking participants through medical records, the data is far more complete.
This research also highlights how important the stage of MCI is. Current Alzheimer’s drugs can slow progression only in the early stages, not in later dementia. A tool like this may give people time to prepare, seek therapy, or take action before symptoms disrupt daily life.
In the future, the researchers hope to add blood tests that can detect early signs of Alzheimer’s. These blood markers are becoming more reliable and could make risk prediction much more accessible than PET scans.
Overall, the study provides valuable insights. It shows that amyloid buildup, genes, age, and sex all play meaningful roles in predicting future memory decline.
The tool is still for research use only, but it represents an important step toward personalized brain‑health care. It gives hope that one day people may know their risk early enough to make meaningful changes to their health and future.
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.
Copyright © 2025 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
