From: olivercranglejr@gmail.com   
      
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   On Thursday, October 17, 2013 4:14:40 PM UTC-5, Oliver Crangle wrote:   
   > Tags cognitive decline, Alzheimer's   
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   > (CC By 2.0)  A simple odor detection test using peanut butter may help   
   clinicians easily and cheaply diagnose early stage Alzheimer's disease.   
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   > A tablespoon of peanut butter and a simple ruler may provide an excellent   
   diagnostic test for early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, in a low-tech approach   
   to measuring cognitive decline.   
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   > Jennifer Stamps, a graduate student at the University of Florida, generated   
   the idea for the non-invasive test while working with Kenneth Heilman, a   
   professor of neurology at the university, who told her, “If you can up with   
   something quick and    
   inexpensive, we can do it.”   
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   > Given the decline of the olfactory sense with cognitive decline, Stamps   
   reasoned that testing the ability to smell might indicate someone’s level of   
   cognitive decline, a symptom of Alzheimer’s disease. Such testing proved to   
   be relatively easy to    
   conduct non-invasively given that such degeneration among Alzheimer’s   
   patients typically occurs on one side of the brain, leaving an asymmetrical   
   ability to detect odor.   
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   > Thus, one nostril might better detect peanut butter — a “pure odorant”   
   — than the other.   
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   > In the small pilot study, patients closed their eyes and mouth and blocked   
   one nostril, as a clinician tested their ability to detect the smell of peanut   
   butter. With no knowledge of each patient’s diagnosis, the clinician held a   
   container holding 14    
   grams of peanut butter at closer and closer distances to the patient’s   
   nostril, pausing 90 seconds before moving one centimeter closer.   
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   > The investigators found that patients in the early stages of the disease   
   experienced a dramatic difference between left and right nostrils in the   
   ability to detect the peanut butter. Impaired by cognitive decline in the   
   olfactory cortex, such patients    
   were unable to detect the smell with their left nostrils, at an average   
   distance of 10 centimeters beyond the threshold for the right nostril.   
   Patients typically detected the peanut butter at a mean distance of 5.1   
   centimeters with the left nostril,    
   compared with 17.4 centimeters with the right.   
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   > Of two dozen patients, 14 showed impairment with the left nostril while 10   
   did not.   
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   > “At the moment, we can use this test to confirm diagnosis,” Stamps said   
   in a release. “But we plan to study patients with mild cognitive impairment   
   to see if this test might be used to predict which patients are going to get   
   Alzheimer’s disease.   
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   > Heilman said that the new test may provide a more practical tool for   
   clinicians, given that current diagnostics for Alzheimer’s and other forms   
   of dementia can be expensive, invasive, and time-consuming. “We see people   
   with all kinds of memory    
   disorders,” Heilman said. “This can become an important part of the   
   evaluation process.”    
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   > Source: Stamps JJ, Bartoshuk LM, Heilman KM. A Brief Olfactory Test For   
   Alzheimer’s Disease. Journal of the Neurological Sciences. 2013.   
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   > http://m.medicaldaily.com/peanut-butter-sniff-test-may-help-de   
   ect-early-stage-alzheimers-disease-259405   
      
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