Their method combines a lumbar puncture test with an MRI brain scan.
This checks for brain shrinkage as well as lower-than-normal levels of amaloid protien in a patient's cerebro-spinal fluid.
In a test of 105 healthy volunteers, researchers found brain shrinkage among participants with low levels of amaloid proteins to be double that of those with normal levels.
The study appears in the journal Annals of Neurology.
