United States: A simple and easy blood test could potentially help identify Alzheimer’s disease, thus significantly increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the disease’s diagnosis.
More about the finding
At present, diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease involves memory and cognitive examinations combined with imaging and other related tests.
However, as per the National Institute on Aging, these sorts of tests are frequently carried out to exclude other possible causes of the symptoms.
Nevertheless, it remains a widespread phenomenon even at present, and the authors of a new study noted that 30-35% of patients attending specialized studios and clinics receive erroneous conclusions. In refined analysis, that percentage probably increases for patients who only present at a primary care facility.
Some of the blood tests that have demonstrated efficacy as an etiological diagnostic method are burdened by the act’s complexity. An international team of physicians may have solved that problem with a new method; therefore, this problem may not be very relevant today, as gizmodo.com reported.
More about the study
Like prior blood tests for the disease, the test was designed to identify a biomarker in plasma, the liquid part of blood containing specific proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
A related biomarker, called plasma phosphorylated tau 217 or p-tau217, is also present in cerebrospinal fluid, although collecting that is a bit trickier than blood, as gizmodo.com reported.
This test also measured the proportion of two parts of a plaque that develops in the brains of individuals who have Alzheimer’s. If p-tau217 is detected in a sample with a specific content of the plaque components, the researchers believed such would mean only that the patient was affected by the disease.
Just to clarify, the patients were described to be divided into groups in which the results of the blood tests were compared to a cerebrospinal fluid test.
The authors of a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association said that their new method can identify the signs of Alzheimer’s in patients with 90 percent efficiency.