Writing Samples Help Predict Alzheimer’s Decades Before it Appears

One of the most devastating symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease is the progressive loss of language. Patients begin speaking in short, simple sentences, then phrases, then single words. Finally they fall mute. In a report last February, researchers turned up the alarming possibility that this erosion of language and memory may begin far sooner than anyone has ever suspected. Epidemiologist David Snowdon and his colleagues at the University of Kentucky in Lexington found that a simple, list-like writing style among young women was a good indication that they would develop Alzheimer’s some 60 years later.