Recent studies held at the Washington University show that people at risk for Alzheimer's are twice as likely to experience falls compared with peers with no signs of the disease.

Scientists studied brain scans of 125 senior people and asked them to keep a record of the number of times they fell over an eight-month period according to presstv. The study measured the rate of falls among cognitively healthy older adults with and without preclinical Alzheimer's - as measured by amyloid imaging using positron emission tomography (PET) with Pittsburgh compound B (PiB), a fluorescent analog of thioflavin T, used in PET scans to image beta-amyloid plaques in neuronal tissue.

The results showed that those participants who had early signs of Alzheimer's in their brain including formation of the disease related plaques, were at a 2.7 times higher risk of a fall, according to the report presented at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Paris.

Recent studies have found that Alzheimer's disease occurs more often among people who suffered significant traumatic head injuries earlier in life. Also it is more significant in women than men, giving researchers concern on the role of estrogen.

Also, although Alzheimer’s is usually targeted to the older generation, it may also show early signs in those of the younger generation as well. It is very natural for anyone to forget certain things that have happened during a specific day, or even the answers to a test. But a few simple problems, such as memory loss, poor or decreased judgment, or changes in mood or behavior, can be signs of later development of Alzheimer’s.

Scientists suggest that studying eye changes and fall rates may be possibly used after further studied and developed as screening tests for patients with early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

"Today, there is no single method for detecting Alzheimer's until the disease is well advanced. Current PET and MRI scans can detect some brain changes, but these procedures can be expensive and technically challenging, and so are impractical for testing in large populations," said Shaun Frost [to the AAIC], of CSIRO's Australian e-Health Research Center.