Towards a More Sensitive Blood Test for the Earlier Stages of Alzheimer ' s Disease

The onset of Alzheimer's disease is preceded by years of slowly growing levels of amyloid-β aggregates in the brain. There is an equilibrium between amyloid-β in the brain and amyloid-β in the bloodstream, and so the research community has worked towards blood tests that can determine who is at risk of developing the condition. This goal is complicated by the sensitivity required, given the low levels of amyloid-β in blood samples, but the results here suggest that this problem may be sufficiently well solved to proceed towards an widely used assay. While the failure of clinical trials testing amyloid-clearing immunotherapies strongly suggests that amyloid-β is not the right target for the development of treatments for Alzheimer's disease, it may still be helpful as a biomarker. Scientists are in the initial stages of development of a method to detect the biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease that is 10 times more sensitive than current blood testing technology. For Alzheimer's disease, doctors most often diagnose patients based on their symptoms. By that time, the patients often already have severe brain damage. Imaging technology such as magnetic resonance imaging and CT scans can also be used to help confirm the disease, but they are not suitable for early stage diagnosis. Occasionally, doctors may test spinal fluid to look for beta-amyloid proteins, markers of the disease, but the process is more invasive than a simple blood test would be. One common way...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs