Early Diagnosis and Targeted Treatment Strategy for Improved Therapeutic Outcomes in Alzheimer's Disease.

There have been repeated failures of clinical studies in the development of new efficacious treatments for Alzheimer's disease. This may be due to the fact that Alzheimer's disease is a heterogeneous disorder caused by person-to-person differences in genetic background, epigenetic profiles, environmental triggers, or the presence of other diseases. Furthermore, most Alzheimer's disease patients are diagnosed in the middle to late stages of the illness, when irreversible damage to the brain has already occurred. With this in mind, a strategy is presented involving identification and implementation of biomarker tests for diagnosis during the prodromal or early stages of the disease. In addition, it is proposed that targeting specific components of the amyloid deposition, tau oligomerization and neuroinflammation pathways may lead to improved outcomes in clinical studies.