Study: Blood-Based Test Could Detect Alzheimer's Disease Early
Researchers collected blood samples over several years from 56 people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition that leads to Alzheimer's disease at a much higher rate than the wider population
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Facts
- Researchers collected blood samples over several years from 56 people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition that leads to Alzheimer's disease at a much higher rate than the wider population.
- New research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London — published in the journal Brain — has established a blood-based test that can potentially predict the risk of Alzheimer's disease years before clinical diagnosis.
- The study found that changes in neurogenesis occurred 3.5 years before a clinical diagnosis, the first evidence in humans that the circulatory system can influence the brain's ability to form new cells, according to the study's authors.
- Blood tests collected from the 36 people volunteering for this study who went to develop Alzheimer's disease promoted a decrease in cell growth and division and an increase in programmed cell death.
- This comes weeks after another study published in Brain found that levels of the brain-derived tau protein — specific to Alzheimer's disease — in the blood correlated with levels of tau in the cerebrospinal fluid and with the severity of amyloid plaques and tau tangles in brain tissue from those who had died with this disease.
- Alzheimer's disease — a brain disorder that gradually destroys memory and thinking skills — reportedly affects over 6M people in the US, most of them aged 65 or older, and is the seventh leading cause of death in the US. Early diagnosis and treatment can help preserve daily functioning for a while and allow families to plan for the future.
Sources: Daily Mail, Kcl, New york post, Kcl, Guardian and Nia.
Narratives
- Narrative A, as provided by Medpagetoday. It's thrilling that we are able to witness this revolution in Alzheimer's disease diagnosis, as some one-quarter of clinical diagnoses are wrong, but blood-based biomarkers are not ready for widespread use yet. For them to be used as stand-alone tests in primary care, additional research is needed.
- Narrative B, as provided by Washington Post. Though still costly and limited, blood tests for Alzheimer's disease are already a reality that can help to diagnose this devastating illness. Equally important, the development of these tests — which go hand-in-hand with finding a treatment — advance research and bring awareness. More data and research is always needed, but the future is bright, and hopefully, tests will soon be widely adopted.
- Nerd narrative, as provided by Metaculus. There's a 99% chance that there will be a breakthrough in accurately predicting protein structure before 2031, according to the Metaculus prediction community.
