technology
Digital diagnosis
New phone game may
predict risk of Alzheimer’s.
By Conor Burke
R
esearch from the University of East
Anglia in the UK claims that a new
mobile phone game can predict
which people are at risk of Alzheimer’s.
The research studied how people who
are genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s
play the game compared with those who
are not.
The game, called Sea Hero Quest, was
developed in conjunction with Alzheimer’s
Research UK, University College London
(UCL), the University of East Anglia and
game developers Glitchers, and has been
downloaded 4.3 million times worldwide.
This is an innovative way to conduct
a study, as having three million players
globally equates to more than 1700 years’
worth of lab-based research.
The team analysed gaming data taken
from 27,108 UK players aged between 50
and 75 – the group most likely to develop
Alzheimer’s in the next decade – as they
made their way around mazes and islands.
The results, published in the journal
PNAS, showed that on specific levels of Sea
36 agedcareinsite.com.au
Hero Quest, people who are genetically at
risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease can
be distinguished from those who are not.
The findings are particularly important
because a standard memory and thinking
test could not distinguish between the risk
and non-risk groups.
Lead researcher Professor Michael
Hornberger, from UEA’s Norwich Medical
School, said: “Current diagnosis of
dementia is strongly based on memory
symptoms, which we know now are
occurring when the disease is quite
advanced. Instead, emerging evidence
shows that subtle spatial navigation and
awareness deficits can precede memory
symptoms by many years.
“Our current findings show that we
can reliably detect such subtle navigation
changes in at-genetic-risk of Alzheimer’s
disease healthy people without any
problem symptoms or complaints. Our
findings will inform future diagnostic
recommendations and disease treatments
to address this devastating disease.”
The research compared the benchmark
data to a smaller lab group of 60 people.
These people underwent genetic testing,
and 31 were found to have the APOE4
gene, which is known to be linked with
Alzheimer’s disease.
Around one in four people have a
copy of the APOE4 gene, which means
they’re about three times more likely to be
affected by Alzheimer’s and to develop the
disease at a younger age.
“We found that people with a high
genetic risk, the APOE4 carriers, performed
worse on spatial navigation tasks. They
took less efficient routes to checkpoint
goals,” Hornberger said.
“This is really important because these
are people with no memory problems.
“Meanwhile, those without the APOE4
gene travelled roughly the same distance
as the 27,000 people forming the baseline
We found that people
with a high genetic risk
performed worse on spatial
navigation tasks.
score. This difference in performance was
particularly pronounced where the space
to navigate was large and open.
“It means that we can detect people who
are at genetic risk of Alzheimer’s based on
how they play the game.” ■