Team:MIT/2014.igem.org/Team:MIT/Interviews
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Having read multiple scientific articles on Alzheimer’s disease (AD), we felt like we had a good grip on the current research. But we felt we were missing something. Our goal in part is to detect the disease, which involves working with doctors. So, we went and good feedback from them.<br> | Having read multiple scientific articles on Alzheimer’s disease (AD), we felt like we had a good grip on the current research. But we felt we were missing something. Our goal in part is to detect the disease, which involves working with doctors. So, we went and good feedback from them.<br> | ||
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We first went to talk to Dr. David Caplan (MD, PhD, Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School Neurologist, Massachusetts General Hospital) We had a long discussion with him about what the current methods of diagnosis of AD were. It was obvious that the current methods are inadequate. They are solely based on psychological test. Sometimes, it is easy to assess whether a person has the disease, when the characteristics a patient is displaying are abnormal compared to normal aging, but sometimes it is very difficult. Dr. Caplan gave us an example of a 80-year-old MIT civil engineer. He was showing characteristics of AD, yet had brilliant discussions about his work time and again--his symptoms were masked. In the early stages of AD, symptoms can be incredibly varied, depending on where the neural degradation began. “It is all subjective”, Dr. Caplan said. To an expert, sometimes there is no question that the patient is displaying Alzheimer’s symptoms, but very often, even they have to send patients to neuropsychologists, to evaluate symptoms with those of other neural diseases that overlap (eg, Parkinson’s disease). When we asked about early detection for AD, he said, “this is where the field is now.” There are a couple of methods. But they all have their problems. But even if there is a good method, he said, there is currently nothing we can do to treat the disease.<br> | We first went to talk to Dr. David Caplan (MD, PhD, Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School Neurologist, Massachusetts General Hospital) We had a long discussion with him about what the current methods of diagnosis of AD were. It was obvious that the current methods are inadequate. They are solely based on psychological test. Sometimes, it is easy to assess whether a person has the disease, when the characteristics a patient is displaying are abnormal compared to normal aging, but sometimes it is very difficult. Dr. Caplan gave us an example of a 80-year-old MIT civil engineer. He was showing characteristics of AD, yet had brilliant discussions about his work time and again--his symptoms were masked. In the early stages of AD, symptoms can be incredibly varied, depending on where the neural degradation began. “It is all subjective”, Dr. Caplan said. To an expert, sometimes there is no question that the patient is displaying Alzheimer’s symptoms, but very often, even they have to send patients to neuropsychologists, to evaluate symptoms with those of other neural diseases that overlap (eg, Parkinson’s disease). When we asked about early detection for AD, he said, “this is where the field is now.” There are a couple of methods. But they all have their problems. But even if there is a good method, he said, there is currently nothing we can do to treat the disease.<br> |
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Having read multiple scientific articles on Alzheimer’s disease (AD), we felt like we had a good grip on the current research. But we felt we were missing something. Our goal in part is to detect the disease, which involves working with doctors. So, we went and good feedback from them. |