Towards global equity in early Alzheimer’s detection

Daughter: Dad, what is your date of birth?
Father: Wednesday 9th of May 1945. Laura, why do you keep asking me this question?
Daughter: Dad, it’s Anne, not Laura!
Father: What is this nonsense? You are not Anne… where is my daughter?

This dialogue could easily be from the recent dramatic film, The Father with Anthony Hopkins, as an old man who starts to forget important events of his life, and his loved ones. He has developed Alzheimer’s disease, a devastating disease, that to date, has no cure after onset. Unfortunately, the events occurring in this movie are the reality of nearly 35 Million individuals worldwide, who suffer the consequences of the disease alongside their family members. This number is expected to double every 20 years reaching 70 Million in 2040, of which 70% will be from low and middle income countries.

We are Caroline Lustenberger and Rafael Polania from the Department of Health Sciences and Technology at ETH Zurich. We joined forces to carry out an ambitious project called EARDREAM in which we aim at developing an early detection biomarker of Alzheimer’s disease —that is, before symptoms arise—based on a low-cost wearable device that could be accessed and utilised anywhere in the world.

The development of our technology considers two key aspects. First, the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease progress slowly. Therefore, it is difficult to recognise that there’s a problem. However, research indicates that the first stages of the disease start over 15 to 20 years before the first cognitive symptoms are evident. This is crucial because early detection is required for early interventions that might be key to slow or prevent progression of the disease. Second, globally most Alzheimer’s cases remain undiagnosed, particularly in rural and under-developed regions. With EARDREAM, we aim at detecting Alzheimer’s disease as early as possible, before symptoms arise, but with approaches that are low-cost and can be deployed everywhere in the world benefiting under-developed and developed regions equally.

EARDREAM detects specific changes of brain activity during sleep and wakefulness in the convenience of people’s homes, based on a wearable device that can record high-quality brain activity from the ear in a non-obtrusive manner. It is as simple as putting earphones into your ear and pressing a button on small box.

We have successfully started the project, but more funding is required. Thanks to generous seed funding from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF), we are currently at the beginning of data collection in Colombia from individuals with the genetic mutations, their family members who do not have the mutations, and from participants from Switzerland at different age-ranges to establish control groups for cultural and socio-economic status. This is hopefully just the start of an immense initiative that could revolutionise how we diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. Life expectancy drastically increased in the last few decades, and with that, the need to maintain a healthy and independent life well into advanced old age. Dementia-related disorders such as Alzheimer’s will affect many of us as we grow older. The time to enable early diagnoses and interventions is now, and with that hopefully delay and prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s across the globe.

We are currently looking for healthy adults between 20-40 years or 50-75 years of age that test our EARDREAM device. If you are interested to get more information on ongoing studies in our lab, just send an email to eardream@hest.ethz.ch.