A Blood Test for Alzheimer ’ s Disease Is Almost Here

As the world’s population ages, health experts are bracing for higher rates of age-related diseases, including Alzheimer’s. Finding new ways to diagnose the condition is more of a priority than ever, since new treatments work best earlier in the course of disease. But currently, the two primary ways to diagnose Alzheimer’s—PET imaging or a lumbar puncture—are either too expensive or invasive for most people, leaving too many cases undiagnosed. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] In a study published in JAMA Neurology, researchers report on a promising, more accessible test using blood, which could make more widespread screening and monitoring of the neurodegenerative condition possible. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden worked with ALZPath, a company that developed a blood-based Alzheimer’s test used in research studies, to determine how well the test measured up to the current gold standards of PET imaging and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) tests from lumbar punctures. The researchers analyzed scans or CSF and blood samples from nearly 800 people in three different patient populations in the U.S., Canada, and Spain. In the comparison, the blood test performed as well as CSF in detecting Alzheimer’s—an encouraging finding, since CSF performs as well as PET scans in diagnosing the condition. More From TIME [video id=OqOCGC2i autostart="viewable"] “This test showed that blood and ...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news