Blood test can diagnose Alzheimer’s disease with 95% accuracy – NBC Chicago

BARCELONA – A blood test can diagnose Alzheimer’s disease with about 95% accuracy, according to the results of a study published in JAMA Neurology, which included researchers from the Sant Pau Hospital (Barcelona).

According to the Catalan hospital, this study, aimed at finding biomarkers in the blood that allow diagnosis in a less invasive way, confirms that the phosphorylated protein TAU 217 (p-tau217) shows high accuracy in detecting pathology.

Several years ago, the only way to detect this neurodegenerative disease was through post-mortem examination of the brain, until biomarkers were found to identify it through cerebrospinal fluid analysis.

This study shows that p-tau217 provides comparable accuracy to cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers and is particularly effective in detecting longitudinal changes even in preclinical stages of disease.

Dr. Daniel Alcolea, a researcher at the Dementia Neurobiology Group at the Sant Pau Research Institute and responsible for the biomarker platform of the Memory Unit of the same hospital, assures that “of all the biomarkers that are currently being studied, this is the one that has given the best results “

In addition, this new method can reduce by 80% the need for additional tests needed to confirm the diagnosis.

In this sense, researcher and director of the neurology service of the same hospital, Dr. Alberto Lleo, assures that “the introduction of this type of test could significantly improve the clinical assessment and recruitment of participants in clinical trials, as well as facilitate the management of patients and ensure timely access to disease-modifying therapies.”

The study is based on samples of 786 patients with a mean age of 66.3 years analyzed in Sweden.

The researchers analyzed data from three observational groups: Translational Biomarkers of Aging and Dementia (TRIAD) from Canada; the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention (WRAP) from the USA and the Sant Pau Initiative on Neurodegeneration (SPIN) from Barcelona.