Their successful treatment of a young mother who had been experiencing the debilitating effects of Alzheimer’s is being closely followed.

When a 33-year-old mother of three daughters, one of them just a baby, came to Australian researcher Professor Ralph Martins and his team at Perth’s Edith Cowan University, she was heavily affected by an aggressive form of Alzheimer’s, a disease that damages the brain and eventually kills its sufferers.

“She was in probably the second year of Alzheimer’s and her family were very worried for her,” explains Martins.

“She was disorientated, her memory was not very good and she didn’t have any motivation.”

Alzheimer’s disease is caused by a build-up of a toxic protein known as beta-amyloid. Often it accumulates over three or more decades, which is why many sufferers are elderly. However, some younger people have a defective gene that causes an overproduction of beta-amyloid. Once they get Alzheimer’s they often decline much more rapidly than older sufferers.

In the case of Martins’ patient, the woman’s own mother had died at just 33 from Alzheimer’s, and she had also lost her aunt and cousin to the illness.

Martins trialled giving the patient a readily available testosterone-based drug that he had been investigating for several years after seeing that it helped to limit the production of beta-amyloid.

“Within a month on the hormone she became a different person. She was vibrant, very interactive, and spending more time with her kids. Her quality of life was taken to another level.”

The woman’s short-term memory improved slightly and stabilised, too.

The testosterone was given through an implant that lasted three months.  Martins, a former Australian of the Year candidate who was West Australian of the Year in 2010, says: “The production of the brain toxin beta-amyloid is greatly increased in this woman, and can be likened to a tap that’s fully switched on, bathing the brain with beta-amyloid. What we’re doing with testosterone is to use it to try to switch that tap off, to counteract it.”

Martins’ team is one of 10 around the world taking part in a study to identify people with the gene that causes early onset of Alzheimer’s before it takes hold of its young victims’ brains.

The lead researcher at McCusker Alzheimer’s Research Foundation, Martins is on the cusp of developing a blood test in collaboration with colleagues in Melbourne and the CSIRO that would identify Alzheimer’s – genetic and otherwise – well before physical symptoms begin to appear. This is important because it is believed that once the brain is damaged by Alzheimer’s, it can’t be repaired. But if doctors can discover the disease early enough, they might be able to stop its spread with a preventative drug, possibly testosterone, and limit damage to the brain.

“It’s a bit like getting a cholesterol test for heart diseases,” says Martins. “We’re leading the charge in Australia, if not the world, in looking at a range of blood biomarkers that would help us design a blood test.”