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Alzheimer disease

Preclinical Alzheimer disease — the new frontier

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Studies of preclinical Alzheimer disease (AD) have unexpectedly shown amyloid-β deposition and/or AD-like neurodegenerative changes in the brains of a high proportion of clinically normal elderly individuals. As two recent reports illustrate, imaging and fluid biomarker studies in these individuals are yielding new insights into the pathophysiology of cognitive ageing.

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Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges research supported from the NIH (grants P50 AG16574, U01 AG06786 R01 AG11378 and R01 AG41851), and the Robert H. and Clarice Smith and Abigail Van Buren Alzheimer's Disease Research Program of the Mayo Foundation.

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Correspondence to David S. Knopman.

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Competing interests

The author serves on a Data Safety Monitoring Board for Lundbeck Pharmaceuticals and for the DIAN study, and is an investigator in clinical trials sponsored by Biogen, TauRX Pharmaceuticals, Lilly Pharmaceuticals and the Alzheimer's Disease Treatment and Research Institute, University of Southern California.

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Knopman, D. Preclinical Alzheimer disease — the new frontier. Nat Rev Neurol 12, 620–621 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2016.153

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