Scientists are leaning towards using biological methods to diagnosis Alzheimer’s 15-20 years sooner. Rather than waiting until cognitive decline reveals itself in a patient to start testing and diagnosing Alzheimer’s, doctors can diagnose the disease using objective and biological evaluations from brain scans. Dr. Clifford R. Jack Jr. of the Mayo Clinic led a few of his fellow experts to change the guidelines in The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association to include these objective brain characteristics in the signs of the disease, meaning that a lot more people will be correctly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s 20 years sooner than they otherwise would have been. These brain scans haven’t been approved in the mainstream treatment of Alzheimer’s, only in studying it, but this evaluation tactic has huge implications. This disease currently has no cure, only treatments that temporarily and slightly ease symptoms, and experts believe it is because the disease is often caught too late, similarly to cancer. Because doctors can now use this improved, objective definition of the disease to identify it and study patients before symptoms develop, they may be able to develop treatments to prevent the eventual cognitive decline.