Toni Dimaano Science 12.28.2022 21:Dec PM EST

Researchers Reveal New Blood Test Can Detect Alzheimer's Earlier

Researchers have created a blood test to detect Alzheimer's disease without the use of painful lumbar punctures or pricey brain imaging.

Using a blood sample, a team of neuroscientists led by a researcher from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine created a test to identify a brand-new marker of Alzheimer's disease neurodegeneration.

The New Alzheimer's Test Is Cheaper And More Accessible

One of the top objectives for many researchers is still discovering better ways to identify Alzheimer's disease early.

According to the Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's disease, the most prevalent type of dementia, affects more than six million people in the United States.

But making a correct diagnosis still proves difficult, particularly in the disease's early stages, as three unique markers must be discovered in the body, according to current recommendations.

The issue, however, is that obtaining evidence of these markers is difficult and uncomfortable because it frequently necessitates lumbar punctures or more pricey brain imaging.

As per recent research, a blood test might offer a less expensive and more easily available diagnostic tool.

Engadget reports that researchers from Sweden, Italy, the UK, and the US presented a new blood test based on antibodies that they recently created.

The new test can identify tau proteins that are unique to Alzheimer's disease and are derived from the brain, as per the scientists' findings.

The team discovered their test could accurately differentiate the condition from other neurodegenerative illnesses after studying 600 people.

The discovery, according to Dr. Thomas Karikari, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the study's co-authors, could assist other researchers in creating better clinical trials for Alzheimer's treatments.

Dr. Karikari even adds that in the US, a major issue that Alzheimer's patients face is the lack of accessible MRI and PET scanners, which prompted the team to start the study.

"A blood test is cheaper, safer and easier to administer, and it can improve clinical confidence in diagnosing Alzheimer's and selecting participants for clinical trial and disease monitoring," he tells The Guardian.

The Team Wants To Validate The Findings Further By Conducting More Tests

Detecting signs of nerve cell damage that are particular to the brain has been more difficult, despite the fact that current blood tests can accurately detect anomalies in amyloid and tau proteins.

Dr. Karikari and his international colleagues concentrated on creating a blood test using antibodies to identify a specific kind of tau protein termed brain-derived tau, which is exclusive to Alzheimer's disease.

The experiments revealed that the amounts of BD-tau found in blood samples from Alzheimer's patients using the novel assay matched the levels of tau in the CSF and consistently separated Alzheimer's from other neurodegenerative disorders.

Monitoring blood levels of BD-tau may help clinical trial design, make it easier to enroll patients from populations that haven't often been represented in research cohorts, and improve patient screening.

This is why the test is validated in a larger population of patients with different racial and ethnic backgrounds, varying stages of memory loss, or other suspected dementia symptoms, University Of Pittsburgh Medical Center details.

These will pave the way for the commercial release of BD-tau for wider clinical and prognostic usage to ensure that the biomarker results are generalizable to individuals from all backgrounds.