Researchers suggest a less traditional assessment could help flag dementia earlier

2019 ended on a high note for Alzheimer’s research. Just before the new year, the pharma company Biogen released clinical trial data suggesting that its drug, aducanumab, could successfully remove amyloid from the brain—one of the trademark proteins behind Alzheimer’s disease. Understandably, the drug has gotten a lot of attention: It’s been a bleak few decades for Alzheimer’s research, whose history is pock-marked with clinical trial failures. If approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, aducanumab would be the first new treatment for the disease in over a decade.