In a new study, researchers have found a method to create a new blood marker capable of detecting Alzheimer’s disease in the early stages.
If the method is approved for clinical use, it can be used as a diagnostic tool in primary healthcare.
The research was done by a team from Lund University, together with the Roche pharmaceutical company.
Currently, the diagnostics of Alzheimer’s disease is done by finding the abnormal accumulation of the substance beta-amyloid in the brain.
This can be detected either in a spinal fluid sample or through brain imaging using a PET scanner.
But these are expensive methods that are only available in specialist healthcare. Doctors have therefore long been searching for simpler diagnostic tools.
In the new study, the team examined whether a simple blood test could identify people in whom beta-amyloid has started to accumulate in the brain, i.e. people with underlying Alzheimer’s disease.
They used a simple and precise method suitable for clinical diagnostics and screening in primary healthcare and were able to identify beta-amyloid in the blood with high accuracy.
They tested the method in 842 people in Sweden and 237 people in Germany.
The participants in the study are Alzheimer’s patients with dementia, healthy elderly people and people with mild cognitive impairment.
The researchers believe that this new blood sample analysis could be helpful for screening people for inclusion in clinical drug trials against Alzheimer’s disease
It can also help improve the diagnostics in primary care which will allow more people to get the currently available symptomatic treatment against Alzheimer’s disease.
This autumn, the team will start a study in primary healthcare to test the technique.
The lead author of the study is Sebastian Palmqvist, associate professor at the unit for clinical memory research at Lund University.
The study is published in JAMA Neurology.
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