Although there is no cure yet, science is tightening the siege on neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis, and there are increasingly more and better diagnostic tools and new treatments that slow their progression. This Friday, the prestigious journal The Lancet published two investigations on new techniques that allow detecting Alzheimer's, which is the most common form of dementia, long before the first symptoms appear. They are a simple blood test, which has been shown in other studies to be a great tool for early diagnosis and is already used in hospitals, and a new brain scanner that improves the results of the technique currently used in the United States and Europe. The sooner the disease is identified, the sooner strategies can be deployed to delay its course, which is why it is essential to have early diagnosis tools.

It is not the same to receive a cancer diagnosis now as it was three decades ago. Patients' prognosis is radically better and so is their quality of life. Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, on the other hand, are almost the same as 30 years ago: neurodegenerative diseases are unfortunately still irreversible and have no available cure. However, the appearance of the first approved drugs against Alzheimer's, which are reluctant to arrive in Spain, are disease modifiers, they delay its progression and are the first step towards a paradigm shift, as patients have had no therapy available until now. New and better diagnostic tools have also been developed, capable of anticipating symptoms and their evolution. This encourages professionals at the start of a revolution against these diseases, which have enough parallels to consider joint strategies in the future.

Lia will turn three on December 28th. She doesn't walk independently – she crawls a lot, of course – but she's close to it, and although she communicates in her own way – she points and makes herself understood – she still doesn't speak beyond a few words. She's had multiple tests, and she's being monitored by specialists of all kinds, but they still haven't found the disease that explains the causes of this global developmental delay, although they suspect it could be a rare disease of genetic origin, explains her mother, Laura López Crespo, 39.