Blood Tests Help Predict Alzheimer’s: Study

A new simple blood test is 90 percent accurate in predicting the development of Alzheimer's disease and cognitive decline in the elderly, according to a study.

Researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center identified bio-markers for the disease in the fat or lipid in the blood. They analyzed the blood samples of 525 healthy participants aged over 70 for five years.  Of the participants, 74 were reported having mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) - a condition of prominent memory loss that is also known as amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). Nearly, 46 of these subjects were diagnosed with problems related to memory loss in the beginning of the study while, the rest 28 developed AD or aMCI in later stages.

Three years after the study, researchers compared the blood samples of 53 healthy participants with 53 of those diagnosed with AD or aMCI and found low levels of ten types of lipids.  These lipids breakdown neural cell membranes that process and transmit information through electrical and chemical signals.

Howard J. Federoff, study author, professor of neurology and executive vice president for health sciences at Georgetown University Medical Center, said in a news release, "Our novel blood test offers the potential to identify people at risk for progressive cognitive decline and can change how patients, their families and treating physicians plan for and manage the disorder."

This study also looked into the presence of the APOE4 gene as a risk factor for developing AD but it was not a major predictive factor.

Alzheimer's accounts for nearly, 35.6 million worldwide cases, reports the World Health Organization and the number will triple by 2050. Many attempts to develop drugs to cure and reverse Alzheimer's in the past have failed. The experts believe these findings will help in developing methods to treat the disease at an early stage.

 The researchers plan to conduct the study on people aged 40 to find if these biomarkers can be determined in people before the onset of the disease. Prof Federoff said, "The preclinical state of the disease offers a window of opportunity for timely disease-modifying intervention. Biomarkers such as ours that define this asymptomatic period are critical for successful development and application of these therapeutics."

The research is published in the Journal Nature Medicine.

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