A new study has shown that there is a blood test best for detecting Alzheimer’s disease during its early stages, and another blood test that is optimal for detecting relevant treatment effects. The study was published in the journal ‘Nature Medicine’. It was discovered that several blood biomarkers, namely phospho-TAU231 and AB42/40, were sufficient to identify Alzheimer’s disease pathology even in participants without any symptoms and, thus, to select the right individuals for novel disease-modifying trials. can be used as a strategy. – a task that currently requires expensive molecular imaging techniques or lumbar puncture.
Nevertheless, in a 6-year trial, it was shown that only phospho-TAU217 was associated with Alzheimer’s disease pathology, with decline in cognitive performance and increased brain atrophy typical of early Alzheimer’s. Therefore, phospho-tau217 would be an ideal marker to detect relevant disease-modifying effects of novel interventions. The study has major implications for the use of blood tests in the recently reported anti-Ab tests. “Specific blood tests may be optimal for the detection of Alzheimer’s pathology or for monitoring disease progression and therefore have different roles in clinical trials,” first author Dr Nicholas Ashton from the University of Gothenburg said about the research study. Told in
“This study has shown that phospho-TAU217 is uniquely positioned as an optimal test for monitoring patients in both the clinical setting and the trial setting because of its longitudinal association with the development of Alzheimer’s.” An important aspect of this study was that p-tau217 was able to monitor such changes in pathology and cognition at very early stages of the disease process. This finding was replicated in an independent cohort from the USA, the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention (WRAP). “In addition to improving the design of diagnostic tests, the novel blood test will revolutionize the diagnosis of early stages of Alzheimer’s disease,” says Oscar Hanson. “Further, phosphoho-tau217 may be used in future clinical practice to monitor response in individual patients to disease-modifying therapies.