Headline Dec. 08/ ''' {ALZHEIMER'S IN *ALARMINGS*} '''

''' {ALZHEIMER'S IN *ALARMINGS*} '''

ABOUT 20 YEARS AGO, D. GRADUATED from a top-tier law school. She spoke with rat-a-tat  speed and juggled her many-to-do-lists in her mind.

But in her middle age, her memory began to tatter and she struggled sometimes to find words. She went to a hospital for cognitive-health work-up that carries a single copy of the ApoE4 gene variant.

SIX YEARS AGO -at age 49, Julie Gregory paid an  online service to sequence her genes, hoping to turn up clues her-

Poor circulation, blood-sugar swings and general ill health. Instead she learned she had a ''time bomb'' hidden in her DNA, two copies of a gene variant, ApoE4, that is strongly linked to Alzheimer's.

Most people, most Americans with this genotype go on to develop late-onset dementia.

''Alzheimer was the furthest thing from my mind,'' Ms.Gregory told me. ''I never thought I was at risk. When I saw my results, I was terrified.''

When Ms. Gregory consulted with a neurologist about how to delay the onset of illness, he had four words for her : ''Good luck with that''. After all no drug has proven effective in reversing Alzheimer's disease. And preventing measures like diet and exercise, the neurologist told her, would do no good.

Ms. Gregory is not the sort of person who pops into your mind when you think of Alzheimer's -youngish, healthy and sharp-minded. 

But she represents a type of sufferer we are likely to encounter more and more: those grappling with a looming threat of the disease rather than the disease itself.

Scientists say they are at cusp of developing blood tests that could detect the earliest sign's of Alzheimer's damage in people in their 40s and 50s who have no obvious symptoms.

Today, finding out whether dangerous plaques are building up in your brain requires either a PET scan at a cost of $4,000 or a spinal tap. And while genetic tests can help predict risk, they don't tell us anything about the current state of your brain.

Effective blood tests could reveal thousands  -even millions -of people who are now living with a  ''pre-Alzheimer's'' condition.

On Monday, Bill Gates, the billionaire philanthropist, and co-founder of Microsoft, wrote on his blog that ''men in my family have suffered from Alzheimer's,'' which means that he may have a high risk for dementia.

He called for new approaches to combating the disease, including developing a ''more reliable, affordable and accessible diagnostic -such as a blood test.'' 

Mr Gates also announced that he would be donating $100 million to fight Alzheimer's, which no doubt help to make blood tests a reality.

So you must be faced with difficult choices within the next decade : Do you want to receive potentially alarming news about your cognitive health, or would you rather not? 

If you learn that you have a high risk for Alzheimer's, is that information you will want to keep private -from employers, clients, health insurers and others? 

Or will you to openly embrace it as part of your identity and publicly call for a cure?

In the difficult months after her genetic test, Ms. Gregory ''wanted to be with people who were going through the same devastation.'' so she sought out other ApoE4 carriers.

In 2013, she and few others started a nonprofit group and created a website [ApoE4.info] where the community could gather.Today, the group has more than 2.000 members . 

They pore over medical journals, reach out to top researchers in the field and share note about their experiments with diet, exercise and other lifestyle modifications.

Many of the members maintain their anonymity for fear of being ''outed'' as carriers of the gene variant. One member of the group  -I'll call her D., after her first initial   -told me that she feared public exposure already as much as Alzheimer's itself.

D was alarmed...........Maybe she knew that Alzheimer's was coming for her?

Her father a neurologist, had retired in his 60s because his own mind felt ''wrong'' it's likely that he diagnosed the oncoming dementia in himself. 

''I was just really scared of following in his footsteps,'' she said.

The Honor and Serving of the  latest ''Operational Research'' on Life and Living and Sciences continues. And with many thanks to researcher and writer and author, Pagan Kennedy. 

With respectful dedication to the Grandparents, Parents, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW! -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW! -the Ecosystem 2011:

'''Blood & Diagnostics'''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless