From: deputyfife23x@gmail.com   
      
   Smelling Alzheimer's disease with peanut butter   
   Scientists have found a way to detect Alzheimer's disease using a patient's   
   sense of smell.   
      
      
          
   Marsha Lewis, Contributing Producer	Inside Science   
   Posted: Thursday, August 20, 2015, 3:40 AM   
      
      
   (Inside Science TV) - Some like peanut butter creamy; others like it crunchy,   
   with a little jelly, or straight out of the jar. But scientists have recently   
   discovered that the classic spread could help detect early Alzheimer's disease   
   symptoms.    
      
   Once fully validated, the peanut butter test could provide a cheap, rapid test   
   forAlzheimer's disease, a form of dementia that affects as many as 5 million   
   Americans. "You need a ruler and some peanut butter, and that's it," said   
   Jennifer Stamps, a    
   neuroscientist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL.    
      
   Alzheimer's disease is perhaps most infamous for its cruel toll on thought,   
   language and memory, but "your olfactory cortex, the part of the brain that   
   processes smell, is the first area of the brain to deteriorate in   
   Alzheimer's," Stamps said.    
   Scientists first started researching the relationship between smell and   
   Alzheimer's in the 1980s, with the hopes that odors could help with early   
   diagnoses. But using peanut butter could make these tests cheaper and perhaps   
   even more effective. For one, "   
   peanut butter is not a smell lost during typical aging," said Stamps. It's   
   also a complex odorant, containing hundreds of types of molecules that   
   exclusively trigger the nerves leading to the olfactory cortex.   
      
      
   After ruling out other problems such as prior sinus infections - which could   
   damage a person's sense of smell - Stamps says that in less than two minutes,   
   she can determine if there is a problem with the olfactory cortex. First, the   
   patient is    
   blindfolded and holds one of their nostrils closed.  Stamps then holds up a   
   ruler beside the patient's open nostril and places an open sample of peanut   
   butter on the bottom of the ruler, twelve inches from the patient's nose. She   
   then slowly raises the    
   sample until the patient detects the odor and measures the distance between   
   the peanut butter and the patient's nostril. The test is then repeated with   
   the other nostril.   
      
   Differences between the left and right nostrils' sensitivity are normal, but a   
   large difference may be an early indication of Alzheimer's. In a 2013 study   
   co-authored by Stamps, she found that 18 patients who likely had Alzheimer's   
   disease couldn't smell    
   peanut butter out of their left nostrils until the samples were only 5 cm (2   
   inches) away, some 12 cm (5 inches) closer than samples under their right   
   nostrils.   
      
   While this test isn't the first to use smell to diagnose early-stage   
   Alzheimer's - and bigger evaluations of the test are needed - it has been very   
   accurate thus far.   
      
   MORE COVERAGE   
   Why the aging brain is more vulnerable to alzheimer's   
   Exercise May Buffer Symptoms of Early Alzheimer's   
   High blood sugar boosting Alzheimer's risk   
   "The sensitivity is 100 percent in the early Alzheimer's group," said Stamps.   
   The peanut butter test also might help correct false diagnoses of Alzheimer's,   
   she said. "We get a lot of patients in our practice that are told they have   
   Alzheimer's, and a    
   lot of times they don't."    
      
   Even though there is currently no cure for Alzheimer's, confirming a diagnosis   
   early could be life-changing.  "I think it would be something that you could   
   easily do in a geriatric practice that might make you look harder at their lab   
   work," said Stamps,    
   and hasten the treatment of Alzheimer's symptoms. "The sooner you slow down   
   the progression, the better."   
      
       
      
       
      
   Reprinted with permission from Inside Science, an editorially independent news   
   product of the American Institute of Physics, a nonprofit organization   
   dedicated to advancing, promoting and serving the physical sciences.   
      
      
      
      
   http://mobile.philly.com/health/?wss=/philly/health&id=322319332   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)