Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating neurodegenerative condition that affects millions of people worldwide.
Detecting it in its early stages can be challenging and often requires expensive and invasive procedures. However, early detection is crucial for better outcomes and potential treatments.
A recent development by PharmaKure, a pharmaceutical company affiliated with The University of Manchester, offers hope in the form of a novel blood test that can identify Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers.
The ALZmetrix™ Blood Test
PharmaKure’s proprietary ALZmetrix™ blood test has shown promise in detecting blood-based biomarkers associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
This test aims to provide early warnings of cognitive decline in individuals.
While the initial results are encouraging, the company plans to conduct a larger study that will involve an independent laboratory to validate these findings before seeking regulatory clearance for widespread use.
This study, conducted with ethical approval, focused on testing whole blood samples from individuals. The researchers evaluated several biomarkers in the blood of patients at the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
These individuals had previously undergone testing for amyloid deposits in their brains using either PET imaging or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis.
Key biomarker proteins associated with Alzheimer’s pathology, such as amyloid-β (Total, Aβ40, and Aβ42), α-synuclein, and Tau (Total, pTAU(181), and pTAU(217)), were analyzed in the blood samples.
The researchers employed machine learning tools to combine the blood biomarker data with patient information, including age, gender, amyloid status, and ApoE4 genetics.
These models aimed to develop predictors for Alzheimer’s risk and disease progression based on the blood biomarkers and patient characteristics.
Promising Results
The study’s findings are promising. They indicate that using whole blood, rather than just the plasma fraction, can accurately identify individuals at high risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Furthermore, the machine learning algorithms identified which biomarkers are most useful for this purpose.
The ALZmetrix blood test demonstrated an impressive ability to differentiate between patient groups that were amyloid positive or amyloid negative with 97% accuracy, predicting those at the highest risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Age, APOE4 genetics, and pTau biomarkers were identified as the most useful features in making these predictions. Additionally, the study showed that blood biomarkers, particularly Tau and pTau, can track disease progression.
PharmaKure believes that the ALZmetrix blood test could serve as a low-cost, accessible tool for stratifying patients in clinical studies, offering an alternative to expensive brain scans or other plasma-based tests.
One of the most significant advantages of using whole blood is the potential for developing a screening system that can detect Alzheimer’s before significant memory problems manifest.
This early detection could lead to better health outcomes, reduced healthcare costs, and an improved quality of life for millions of patients.
The scientific team behind this study will be publishing their results in a journal in the coming months.
They believe that sharing these findings promptly is in the public interest, especially considering the lack of available tests for diagnosing the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
If you care about dementia, please read studies about vitamin D deficiency linked to Alzheimer’s, vascular dementia. and findings of strawberries can be good defence against Alzheimer’s.
For more information about health, please see recent studies about how drinking milk affects risks of heart disease and cancer, and results showing strawberries could help prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
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