By Patricia Reaney
DUBLIN - Could a simple word test be used to identify people who might be suffering from the very early stages of Alzheimer's disease? British scientists think so.
Results of a study presented at a science conference on Tuesday revealed that people in the first stages of the incurable illness cannot write down as many animals and fruits in one-minute period as healthy individuals.
Professor Andy Ellis of the University of York in England also discovered that the characteristics of the words the Alzheimer's sufferers produced were different.
They retained very familiar words, ones heard frequently and words learned in early, rather than late, childhood.
"Just by looking at the characteristics of the words people produced you could correctly determine whether somebody came from the group of healthy controls or the Alzheimer's patients," he told the British Association science meeting.
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