Doctors Just Found 4 Hidden Roads to Alzheimer’s.

UCLA researchers uncovered four distinct “roadmaps” leading to Alzheimer’s by analyzing longitudinal health records from nearly 25,000 patients and validating findings in the All of Us cohort. These sequential diagnostic patterns predicted dementia better than any single risk factor:

• Mental‑health pathway: Anxiety or depression → cognitive decline

• Encephalopathy pathway: Episodes of brain dysfunction → escalating decline

• MCI pathway: Mild cognitive impairment slowly progressing

• Vascular pathway: Hypertension → stroke-like events → dementia

About 26% followed one of these structured sequences—e.g., hypertension often led to depression, which then increased Alzheimer’s risk. Recognizing these patterns beats symptom-based prediction, and suggests we could intercept the process much earlier.

Watch your path: managing blood pressure, mental health, and brain wellness may not only treat symptoms—but intercept disease before it takes hold.