Alzheimer's could be detected early using a blood test

biotech healthcare

Robot that can draw blood in humans Results and clinical implications The study results showed that there was a significant increase in levels of ptau181 in patients who had Alzheimer's pathology, especially those with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) – a rare form of neurodegeneration. The study results were close to what was confirmed by ptai181 in the spinal fluids of the participants as well as PET scans showing abnormal protein deposits in the brain. Roderick Corriveau, program director at NIH's NINDS, said in a statement, "It has become clear that there are many possible biological pathways to dementia. Finding a blood test that specifically identifies the presence of Alzheimer's pathology in the brain should greatly help researchers develop better treatments for the many who suffer from dementia." Future directions At present, the team of researchers is working on developing and improving the ptai181 blood test method so that it can replace the currently invasive tests. Eliezer Masliah, M.D., director of NIA's Division of Neuroscience, said in a statement, "Because of NIH's investments, we are poised to make dramatic advances in biomarker development for Alzheimer's disease, FTLD, and related neurodegenerative disorders." The researchers and the experts supporting the study are all hopeful that soon this test and its principle could be used for the development of new and effective drugs to treat Alzheimer's disease. Tiina Urv, program officer in the Office of Rare Diseases Research at the NIH's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), in a statement said, "This research is an example of how studies on rare diseases, in this case, FTLD, may provide important insights into common disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, which affects millions of people." Related study On the 8 th of January this year, a similar study was published in the journal Nature Communications , titled, "Clinically accurate diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease via multiplexed sensing of core biomarkers in human plasma." In this study, the team used core biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease, including "t-tau, p-tau 181 , Aβ 42 , and Aβ 40 ". To detect these biomarkers, the team used "densely aligned carbon nanotubes (CNTs)." The CNTs helped detect the levels of the different tau proteins in the blood and successfully detected Alzheimer's patients from normal controls with the test sensitivity of 90 percent and selectivity of 90 percent. The average accuracy of the test was found to be 88.6 percent, wrote the researchers. Journal reference: Thijssen, E.H., La Joie, R., Wolf, A. et al. Diagnostic value of plasma phosphorylated tau181 in Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Nat Med (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0762-2