Your phone might one day detect if you have Alzheimer’s

Turning into an old windbag may be an early sign of Alzheimer’s, researchers claim.

Elderly people who start rambling on may be in the first stages of the disease, according to language experts.

But those who have always been long-winded are not at risk.

Scientists are now in the process of developing a test that picks up the illness by analyzing changes in speech.

It could one day allow smartphone apps such as Siri to detect problems up to a decade in advance.

Currently, dementia is difficult to diagnose, especially in the early stages.

Most people are referred to a specialist who will carry out a series of memory tests, as well as brain scans.

New research presented at the world’s largest science gathering reveals people in the stage before fully blown Alzheimer’s start speaking in a more rambling, roundabout way.

Even though there is currently no cure for the disease, experts claim early detection is still beneficial.

Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in Boston, researcher Dr. Janet Cohen Sherman said: “One of the greatest challenges right now in terms of Alzheimer’s disease is to detect changes very early on when they are still very subtle and to distinguish them from changes we know occur with normal aging.”

Sherman, a clinical psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said she was inspired by research on famous Alzheimer’s sufferers, such as Ronald Reagan.

A study compared his use of language in press conferences with that of George W. Bush.

Sherman said: “Ronald Reagan started to have a decline in the number of unique words, with repetitions of statements over time, whereas George W. Bush didn’t.

“Ronald Reagan started using more fillers, more empty phrases, like ‘thing’ or ‘something.’”

Similar studies on the works of Agatha Christie — who was suspected to have Alzheimer’s — found her vocabulary was less varied in her later books.

Sherman and her team tested older people’s language skills to see if they were on the verge of dementia.

One group had Alzheimer’s, one group were in the early stages, and a third were healthy.

They were each given three words and asked to make a sentence.

Researchers found a “significant difference” between the healthy groups and those with early dementia.

Sherman said: “Their speech was very different, they were much less concise in conveying information, the sentences they produced were much longer, they had a hard time staying on point and I guess you could say they were much more roundabout in getting their point across.”

“We are hoping this is a simple task, easy to administer, easy to score, we are hoping over time we might be able to develop this into a kind of test to detect early changes that are predictive of Alzheimer’s disease.”

Sherman added: “Many individuals may be long-winded. That’s not a concern.”

“You need to be concerned if there is a change in your ability to communicate effectively and concisely, our study suggests maybe there is a reason to be concerned, or maybe this will help us with detection.”