Study Links Eye Health to Alzheimer's

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According to journalist Sandy LaMotte and CNN.com, "The eyes are more than a window to the soul — they’re also a reflection of a person’s cognitive health."

“The eye is the window into the brain,” said ophthalmologist Dr. Christine Greer, director of medical education at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Boca Raton, Florida. “You can see directly into the nervous system by looking into the back of the eye, toward the optic nerve and retina.”

As LaMotte continues to report, "Research has been exploring how the eye may help in diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms begin. The disease is well advanced by the time memory and behavior are affected."

“Alzheimer’s disease begins in the brain decades before the first symptoms of memory loss,” said Dr. Richard Isaacson, an Alzheimer’s preventive neurologist who is also at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases.

"If doctors are able to identify the disease in its earliest stages," LaMotte notes, "...people could then make healthy lifestyle choices." As Isaacson said, and also control their "modifiable risk factors," like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes.

"Just how early can we see signs of cognitive decline?" LaMotte wondered. "To find out, a recent study examined donated tissue from the retina and brains of 86 people with different degrees of mental decline."

“Our study is the first to provide in-depth analyses of the protein profiles and the molecular, cellular, and structural effects of Alzheimer’s disease in the human retina and how they correspond with changes in the brain and cognitive function,” said senior author Maya Koronyo-Hamaoui, a professor of neurosurgery and biomedical sciences at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, in a statement. “These changes in the retina correlated with changes in parts of the brain called the entorhinal and temporal cortices, a hub for memory, navigation, and the perception of time.”

As LaMotte concluded, "Investigators in the study collected retinal and brain tissue samples over 14 years from 86 human donors with Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment — the largest group of retinal samples ever studied, according to the authors."

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