The investigators also performed genetic and neuroimaging testing on 288 of the study participants."This test aims to identify unusually high amounts of amyloid plaque (a step that occurs up to 10 years prior to cognitive decline) which holds promise for much earlier diagnosis (sensitivity of 85 percent and specificity of 83 percent)," Burnham said. "It was concluded that this work represents a good first step towards a populationbased screening test for Alzheimer's but there is a lot of further work to be completed to achieve this goal. The investigators performed lumbar puncture on 137 individuals with mild cognitive impairment, and clinically followed them for more than nine years."We showed that cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers reflect core elements of neuropathological processes in mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease, with the presence of these biomarkers [being] early indicators of onset of dementia five to 10 years prior," Zetterberg s