A German-Dutch research team used a prognostic blood test to...Risk of Alzheimer's diseasepredict in people. They had not previously been clinically diagnosed with such a condition. However, the test subjects perceived themselves as cognitively impaired.
Can a new prognostic blood test predict Alzheimer's?
The researchers analyzed blood samples from a cohort cared for at the Alzheimer Center Amsterdam. At the Ruhr University Bochum they developed a test called the immuno-infrared sensor. They identified all 22 subjects at study entry who developed dementia and associated clinical symptoms within six years. TheBlood test for Alzheimer's diseasealso showed which subjects had a very low risk of developing dementia within six years. In addition, the subjects underwent extensive diagnostic testing for Alzheimer's disease. At the start of the study, this did not provide a diagnosis of the disease in any of the subjects examined. The immune-infrared sensor, on the other hand, detected misfolded Aβ peptides at the start of the study in all 22 subjects who developed the clinical disease in the following six years.
The research team examined whether the combination of two different measurement methods in plasma biomarkers could further improve the prediction of disease risk. To this end, they combined the misfolding of all Aβ isoforms with a decrease in the concentration of Aβ42 relative to Aβ40 in plasma. The Amsterdam group measured Aβ concentrations using new SIMOA (Single Molecular Array) technology. This increased the assay accuracy from an AUC (area under the ROC curve) of 0.94 to 0.99. With a simple blood test on symptom-free people with subjective concerns, they can now very accurately predict the risk of future development of clinical Alzheimer's disease, according to the study authors. Such a blood test would be particularly useful if an active ingredient were available to treat the disease. The resultsthis studyshow that Alzheimer's drugs should be used as early as possible in a non-clinical stage to improve the response to therapy.
