Every month, I’ll be highlighting Alzheimer’s research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you. Today: “What’s an algorithm and what does it have to do with Alzheimer’s???”
I’ve written on the new methodologies being developed for the DETECTION of Alzheimer’s (Blood tests looking for biomarkers: https://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2021/02/alzheimers-research-right-now-12-blood.html), https://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2020/12/alzheimers-research-right-now-11-new.html, https://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2020/10/alzheimers-research-right-now-10.html, https://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2020/01/alzheimers-research-right-now-5-toxic.html)
I’ve reflected on what the CHANCES are for me of developing Alzheimer’s: “…accept the reality that if you are 60 years old today, the odds of developing Alzheimer’s are 4.8%, or in other words, there is a 95.2% chance that you won’t develop the disease…If you have a first-degree relative with Alzheimer’s disease, your risk of developing the illness is about two to three times higher than someone else your age who doesn’t have a family member with the illness…That puts my chance of developing Alzheimer’s at (using 2.5 times as likely) at 12%. That’s three chances in twenty-five or about one in twelve; twelve and a half to be precise. So, if we put twelve and a half people in a room, I will have Alzheimer’s, eleven others will not, and there will be a grisly murder for someone like Hercule Poirot to solve. Which, being in a writing state of mind, puts an idea into my head…” (https://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2019/10/guys-gotta-talk-aboutalzheimers-26.html)
So, the article that came across my computer today is referenced below. What it does is NOT new research, rather about developing a STANDARDIZED treatment for different kinds of Alzheimer’s. Detecting the biomarkers (stuff in your blood that can tell you something about how sick you are. People who are diabetic have to prick their finger to get a “blood sugar” reading – that’s a “biomarker”.)
What HASN’T been getting easier is figuring out WHAT to do. There are treatments out there – everything from starting a drug regimen (no matter how effective, the attitude with my dad was “trying to do something is better than doing nothing”…) to prescribed exercise and “reading”.
The study here has “…created a new diagnostic biomarker-based algorithm for the diagnostics of dementia…The accurate diagnosis of different types of dementia is frequently complicated and often cannot be set at the early phases of the disease due to the lack of practical and specific diagnostic tools. In addition, the clinical symptoms of patients with various neurodegenerative diseases often overlap and thus, the accurate diagnosis is not always possible.”
What’s an algorithm, though?
“In mathematics, computing, linguistics, and related subjects, an algorithm is a set of instructions, a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem, often used for calculation and data processing. It is formally a type of effective method in which a list of well-defined instructions for completing a task, will when given an initial state, proceed through a well-defined series of successive states, eventually terminating in an end-state. The transition from one state to the next is not necessarily deterministic; some algorithms, known as probabilistic algorithms, incorporate randomness.”
Honestly? A set protocol could be powerful and has a much better chance of success…as opposed to the groping around I saw with my father’s treatment.
Resources: https://medicalxpress.com/tags/algorithm/
Image: https://www.meduniwien.ac.at/web/fileadmin/_processed_/e/1/csm_shutterstock_142671010_4683b6bf13.jpg
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