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Signs of the disease in the spinal fluid to determine if the amount of progress to dementia memory.

A new way to test for signs of Alzheimer disease in cerebrospinal fluid can help to more accurately identify which people with mild memory deficits will advance to full-blown dementia, researchers reported on Wednesday.

The findings, published in the Neurology journal, are part of a drive to find new ways to diagnose Alzheimer’s early, before the disease causes damage.

“Being able to identify early in the process that will develop Alzheimer’s will be crucial in the future,” said Dr. Robert Perneczky Technical University of Munich in Germany, who led the study.

“Once we have treatments that can prevent Alzheimer disease, we could start treating very early and hopefully avoid the loss of memory and thinking abilities that occur with this devastating disease,” he said.

Current evidence of cerebrospinal fluid to look for Alzheimer disease is an imbalance of two proteins: the beta-amyloid, which forms sticky plaques in the brain, and tau, which considered a marker of neuronal damage.

People with Alzheimer’s tend to have lower levels of beta-amyloid and tau levels of protein in their spinal fluid, and doctors often check this to confirm this disease causes that dementia.

In the study, and colleagues analyzed Perneczky remains a key element of the beta-amyloid precursor protein called amyloid or APP.

The researchers collected spinal fluid from 58 people with mild memory problems, cognitive decline or mild, a condition that often progresses to Alzheimer’s.

After three years, 21 people had developed Alzheimer’s disease, 27 were still suffering from mild cognitive impairment, eight had been referred back to normal cognitive health, and two developed a condition called frontotemporal dementia and were excluded from analysis.

The study showed that people who had Alzheimer’s progressed to the significantly higher levels of this remnant of APP soluble amyloid precursor called beta protein in their spinal fluid than those who did not develop the disease.

When combined with other biomarkers, such as the presence of tau and the age of the person, the test was about 80 percent accurate in predicting whether the disease would develop.