The results need to be confirmed, and the approach still needs to be tried in people of different ages and from different racial groups, Federoff says

"Knowing their risk of developing cognitive impairment is very relevant to making plans around retirement and where they live,

On the other hand, people who have the Alzheimer's gene and know it tend to rate their own memories as worse than people who have the gene but don't know it, he says. Knowing you carry the gene also seems to hurt people's performance on memory tests.