Model predicts cognitive decline due to Alzheimer’s, up to two years out

Newswise — CAMBRIDGE, MA — A new model developed at MIT can help predict if patients at risk for Alzheimer’s disease will experience clinically significant cognitive decline due to the disease, by predicting their cognition test scores up to two years in the future.

The model could be used to improve the selection of candidate drugs and participant cohorts for clinical trials, which have been notoriously unsuccessful thus far. It would also let patients know they may experience rapid cognitive decline in the coming months and years, so they and their loved ones can prepare.

Pharmaceutical firms over the past two decades have injected hundreds of billions…