He or she can conduct tests to judge the degree of memory impairment and diagnose the cause.
Research suggests some connection between low numbers of synapses in a person's brain and Alzheimer's symptoms such as memory impairment and language deterioration.
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But a renegade group of doctors use it for a far broader range of ills--everything from heart disease to memory impairment--despite scant evidence it works and potentially dangerous side effects.
The imaging agent can't be used to diagnose someone with Alzheimer's disease if the individual doesn't experience memory impairment because the presence of amyloid in the brain doesn't alone suggest that someone has Alzheimer's.
Also, a recent study found that the DHA component of fish oil from algae helped people with minor memory impairment, but this needs to be replicated in order to be more definitive, he said.
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It's too early to say whether Targacept's drug will improve Alzheimer's treatment, but it has been given to 540 people in 12 prior trials for indications including mild cognitive impairment, which is often a precursor to Alzheimer's and age-associated memory impairment.
But some studies, often funded by the companies involved, argue that the drugs should be more widely used--not only for people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's but also for those with the most severe form of the disease and patients who only have the first twinges of memory impairment.
The guidelines also state that people who have had strokes should be screened for cognitive problems, such as memory or concentration impairment, "as soon as is practicable".
That is, as the disease progresses in the brain, those who have a greater "reserve" do not show symptoms of Alzheimer's -- memory loss and impairment of day-to-day functions -- as quickly.
Kamikihi-to, a Kampo medicine, ameliorates impairment of spatial memory in rats.
Meanwhile, the Allon Therapeutics drug helped improve some measures of short-term memory in patients with mild cognitive impairment, a condition that often leads to Alzheimer's disease.
All three companies are also looking at whether their drugs work in a condition called mild cognitive impairment--mild memory loss that may or may not be a precursor to Alzheimer's or other dementia.
Three of the five were already experiencing mild cognitive impairment as judged by standard memory tests.
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The greatest impairment is found in attention, memory, judgment, decision-making, information processing and language skills.
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Three had suffered from mild cognitive impairment - a more severe form of memory loss than that associated with ageing but less severe than Alzheimer's.
On memory tests, 27% of the football players showed impairment, compared with seven per cent of the swimmers and runners.
In a study published last year in the journal Cortex, Dr. Rankin and her colleagues studied the ability to detect sarcasm in 102 patients who had been diagnosed with four progressive diseases that lead to memory loss: frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer's disease, progressive supranuclear palsy and vascular-cognitive impairment.
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