A drop of blood
Japan has developed a new method for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease
Scientists from the Japanese National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology (National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology) have developed a new method for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease using a highly sensitive blood test, according to a press release (Alzheimer's blood test will accelerate research into the disease - VM).
This analysis, which requires only 0.5 milliliters of blood, will help identify people at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, the report says. The Research Laboratory of Mass Spectrometry Koichi Tanaka and representatives of the Australian Center for the Study of Aging (AIBL) also participated in the development.
One of the significant factors in the appearance of Alzheimer's disease is the deposition of beta-amyloid peptide in the brain. Deposition of this peptide begins about 30 years before the onset of dementia symptoms without any signs of cognitive impairment. As noted in the press release of the center, about 20-40 percent of the elderly population have a significant amount of beta-amyloid in the brain. This may not necessarily lead to Alzheimer's disease, but these people are at "risk".
"The new blood test can identify people with abnormal amounts of beta-amyloid in the brain with an accuracy of about 90 percent," the release adds.
"At the moment, only positron emission tomography and analysis of cerebrospinal fluid are available to determine the deposition of beta-amyloid, but these tests are expensive and/or invasive," said Akinori Nakamura, head of the laboratory of the center, whose words are quoted in the message.
Therefore, a minimally invasive and low-cost blood test is necessary, Nakamura believes. According to him, this "study is important because it demonstrates not only the high efficiency of this blood test, but also its reliability and reproducibility."
The director General of the Research Institute of the center Katsuhiko Yanagisawa, quoted by the press service, said that the analysis will contribute to the development of effective drugs for Alzheimer's disease.
According to him, the most effective way to treat the disease is to intervene at a time when signs of dementia have not yet appeared. "It is expected that our blood test will allow an examination to identify people "at risk" who will be taken for preclinical ... tests," Yanagisawa said.
Article by Nakamura et al. High performance plasma amyloid-β biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease is published in the journal Nature – VM.
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