Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, but diagnosis remains a challenge, especially in the early stages of the disease. A group of American scientists developed a new detection method based on a simple blood test that makes the task easier and avoids more expensive and painful tests.

Alzheimer’s disease is an incurable and terminal neurodegenerative disease. If you have had the misfortune of having a close relative with this disease, you will know that it is terrible because of the cognitive impairment and behavioral disturbances it causes in patients. It usually appears after the age of 65, although there are cases from the age of 40. It can be confused with attitudes related to old age hence the need for early diagnosis, which – even without a cure – allows the disease to be treated as soon as possible with techniques and drugs that can at least alleviate it.

For an accurate diagnosis, it is necessary to detect various markers, abnormal accumulation of amyloid proteins and neurodegeneration, the slow and progressive loss of neuronal cells in specific areas of the brain. Current diagnostic techniques involve a combination of brain imaging using special scanners and CSF analysis. The first ones are very expensive and not always available and, in the case of lumbar potion, painful.

Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease using only a blood test

Obviously, using only a reliable blood test would be a very important step in detecting the disease. Although current blood tests can accurately detect abnormalities in amyloid and tau proteins, brain-specific markers of nerve cell damage have been more difficult to detect. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania have developed an antibody-based test capable of detecting the tau protein specific to Alzheimer’s disease.

The research, published in the journal Brain, was carried out on 600 patients at various stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and found that levels of the protein used were related to CSF ​​(cerebrospinal fluid) levels. and would be able to reliably distinguish Alzheimer’s disease from other neurodegenerative diseases. Protein levels also closely correlated with the severity of amyloid plaques and tau tangles in the brain tissue of people who died of the disease.

“The blood test is cheaper, safer and easier to perform and may improve clinical confidence in the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and the selection of participants for clinical evaluation and monitoring of the disease.”explained the person in charge of the investigation.

The next step will be to validate the test in a wider range of patients, including patients of different racial and ethnic backgrounds and patients suffering from different stages of memory loss or other potential symptoms of dementia. The researchers hope that monitoring levels of this tau protein using a simple blood test could improve the design of clinical trials to treat Alzheimer’s disease.

Through | Guardian