Blood Test Detects Alzheimer’s 20 Years Before Memory Loss Starts

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A huge global problem is that the world is on track to have 100 million people will have Alzheimer’s disease (AD) dementia in 2050. Early, accurate, and biomarker-based diagnosis of AD would be a game-changer for mitigating the course of the disease as early as possible and a means to tell how well treatments are working. A new blood test can identify signs of the degenerative, deadly disease 20 years before memory and thinking problems were expected in people with a genetic mutation that causes Alzheimer.

A global team of researchers (Boston, Sweden, UK, Columbia, Arizona, Indiana) have newly developed blood test for Alzheimer’s that matches far more expensive and invasive tests for accuracy. Diagnosis will cheaper and faster. A new cheap test will also speed up the research, development and testing of new treatments.

The test could be approved for use in two to three years.

Currently about 30 million people have AD around the world.

JAMA – Discriminative Accuracy of Plasma Phospho-tau217 for Alzheimer Disease vs Other Neurodegenerative Disorders

JAMA – Discriminative Accuracy of Plasma Phospho-tau217 for Alzheimer Disease vs Other Neurodegenerative Disorders

Sebastian Palmqvist, MD, PhD; Shorena Janelidze, PhD; Yakeel T. Quiroz, PhD; et alHenrik Zetterberg, MD, PhD; Francisco Lopera, MD; Erik Stomrud, MD, PhD; Yi Su, PhD; Yinghua Chen, MSc; Geidy E. Serrano, PhD; Antoine Leuzy, PhD; Niklas Mattsson-Carlgren, MD, PhD; Olof Strandberg, PhD; Ruben Smith, MD, PhD; Andres Villegas, MD; Diego Sepulveda-Falla, MD; Xiyun Chai, Md; Nicholas K. Proctor, BS; Thomas G. Beach, MD, PhD10; Kaj Blennow, MD, PhD; Jeffrey L. Dage, PhD; Eric M. Reiman, MD; Oskar Hansson, MD, PhD
JAMA. 2020;324(8):772-781. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.12134

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