Global Health Asia-Pacific September 2020 September 2020 | Page 34

Medical News
Blood test can detect Alzheimer’s
It’s a potentially seismic improvement that could improve the diagnosis and treatment of the
neurological condition
Anew blood test has succeeded in diagnosing
Alzhemier’s disease (AD) with the same degree of
accuracy of standard diagnostic methods, which are
invasive, expensive and then hard to carry out in many
cases, raising hopes of a step change in detecting the
dreaded condition.
With about 100 million people estimated to have ADrelated
dementia in 20�0, the World Health Organization
(WHO) has identified improved diagnostics as a key
area in the fight against AD, but available methods
involve costly positron emission tomography (��T)
scans or invasive cerebrospinal �uid (CS�) analysis.
Currently, many AD diagnoses are conducted by
measuring memory and cognitive impairment and by
interviewing family members and caregivers. This leads
to mistakes because doctors can’t easily distinguish AD
from other conditions causing cognitive impairment.
A study presented at the Alzheimer’s Association
International Conference shows that a simple blood
test to identify �-tau21�, a protein linked to AD, can
diagnose the condition as accurately as ��T scans and
CS� analysis, thus streamlining the process.
�This blood test very, very accurately predicts
who’s got Alzheimer’s disease in their brain, including
people who seem to be normal,� Dr Michael Weiner,
an Alzheimer’s disease researcher at the University
of California, San �rancisco, who was not involved
in the study, told the New York Times. �It’s not a
cure, it’s not a treatment, but you can’t treat the
disease without being able to diagnose it. And
accurate, low-cost diagnosis is really exciting, so it’s
a breakthrough.�
The test managed to identify the patients who have
dementia because of Alzheimer’s, thus providing a key
piece of information doctors need to start appropriate
treatement. Since not all forms of dementia are caused
by Alzheimer’s, they might require different kinds of
therapies.
The study results suggest the new test might also
be able to spot the early stages of AD before symptoms
kick in, potentially improving the management of a
devastating disease that often leads to memory loss
and makes people unable to look after themselves.
This diagnostic approach could be particularly
useful in low- and middle-income countries, where
facilities have limited access to CS� or ��T testing,
wrote the study authors.
In addition, experts told the New York Times it could
boost research around new treatments by streamlining
the screening process to select participants in clinical
trials, which now takes years and costs millions of US
dollars because they are based on expensive methods
like ��T and CS� examinations.
�efore entering the clinic, the test will have to
replicate its positive results in other clinical trials
including a variety of racial and ethnic populations.
The test
managed to
identify the
patients who
have dementia
because of
Alzheimer’s
32 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2020 GlobalHealthAsiaPacific.com