New highly accurate blood test to measure progress of Alzheimer’s disease

US researchers have developed a new blood test that not only aids in the diagnosis of Alzheimerrsquos disease but also indicates how far it has progressedWhile currently available blood tests for Alzheimerrsquos disease can diagnose the disease they do not indicate the clinical stage of the disease symptoms ndash that is the degree of impairment in thinking or memory due to Alzheimerrsquos dementiaThe new test can help doctors determine which patients are likely to benefit from drug treatment and to what extent It can also provide insight on whether a personrsquos symptoms are likely due to Alzheimerrsquos versus some other cause said the researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis US and Lund University in SwedenIn the study published in the journal Nature Medicine the researchers found that levels of a protein called MTBRtau243 in the blood accurately reflect the amount of toxic accumulation of tau aggregates in the brain and correlate with the severity of Alzheimerrsquos diseaseAnalysing blood levels of MTBRtau243 from a group of people with cognitive decline the researchers were able to distinguish between people with early or laterstage Alzheimerrsquos disease and separate both groups of patients from people whose symptoms were caused by something other than AlzheimerrsquosldquoThis blood test clearly identifies Alzheimerrsquos tau tangles which is our best biomarker measure of Alzheimerrsquos symptoms and dementiardquo said cosenior author Randall J Bateman Professor of Neurology at Washington UniversityldquoIn clinical practice right now we donrsquot have easy or accessible measures of Alzheimerrsquos tangles and dementia and so a tangle blood test like this can provide a much better indication if the symptoms are due to Alzheimerrsquos and may also help doctors decide which treatments are best for their patientsrdquo he addedThe researchers developed a technique to measure MTBRtau243 levels in peoplersquos blood and compared it to the amount of tau tangles in their brains as measured by brain scansThey piloted the approach on data from two cohorts 108 people from the US and a subset of 55 people from Sweden To assess whether the approach was generalisable they validated it in an independent dataset consisting of the remaining 739 people in SwedenThe researchersrsquo analysis showed that blood MTBRtau243 levels reflected the amount of tau tangles in the brain with 92 per cent accuracyThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever