The procedure to collect nasal cells took just a few minutes. After applying a numbing spray, a clinician guides a tiny brush into the upper part of the nose where smell-detecting nerve cells live. Researchers then study the collected cells to see which genes are active, a sign of what’s happening inside the brain.

The study compared samples from 22 participants, measuring the activity of thousands of genes across hundreds of thousands of individual cells, amounting to millions of data points. The nasal swab was able to pick up early shifts in nerve and immune cells. This includes people who showed lab-based signs of Alzheimer’s but had no symptoms yet.

A combined nose tissue gene score correctly separated early and clinical Alzheimer’s from healthy controls about 81% of the time.

Those eyebrows man! Are we sure that’s not the cause?