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After years of research, a simple blood test has been developed. It can predict familial Alzheimer's disease up to 16 years before the onset of clinical symptoms.
According to a new study, the blood test reliably detects signs of brain damage in people on the verge of developing Alzheimer's – even before they show signs of confusion and memory loss.
Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), part of the Dominant Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN), collaborated on a publication Nature Medicine this details the evidence for the blood test.
The DIAN study, ongoing since 2008, involves a global network of researchers, led by professors John Morris and Randall Bateman of the Washington University of St. Louis, Missouri, with study sites. in the United States, England and Germany, as well as three research teams in Australia. – NeuRA, the Florey Institute and the Edith Cowen University of Washington State. Together, researchers worked with the few families with inherited Alzheimer's genes to identify potential biomarkers for future predictive testing.
Professor Colin Masters AO from the Florey Institute said, "The blood test accurately predicted when members of a family with hereditary Alzheimer's disease would begin to show symptoms. Hereditary Alzheimer's Disease is a rare genetic disorder. Using this very defined patient population, we were able to identify affected family members more than ten years before they began to exhibit cognitive impairment. "
It is to be hoped that the blood test will eventually be useful to a larger number of people susceptible to the common form of the older Alzheimer's disease, called "sporadic", as well as those with a genetic version.
Neurofilament light, or NfL, is an essential element of brain cells. When these cells begin to die in Alzheimer's disease, traumatic brain injury or other neurodegenerative diseases, this module is released into the bloodstream.
The data showed that when patients switched from pre-symptomatic disease to a clear cognitive and memory decline, the NfL accumulated in the blood at the fastest rate.
"NfL levels increase every time the brain is damaged and, since Alzheimer's disease affects 30% of people over 80, we hope that it will become part of a generalist's standard battery, like annual cholesterol tests. We would send patients for more specific tests of Alzheimer's disease if the results were of concern to us, "said Professor Masters.
If a patient is identified as being in the early phase of the disease, he can be referred to a pharmacological clinical trial, make changes to his diet and lifestyle and take existing drugs in the hope of slowing down the progression of the disease.
The next step of the test is to replicate the results in sporadic patients with Alzheimer's disease, who are older and often have other health problems. Patient samples from the Australian Imaging Biomarker and Lifestyle (AIBL) will be used to validate the results of these tests.
L & # 39; study Dynamics of serum neurofilaments predicts neurodegeneration and clinical progression of pre-symptomatic Alzheimer's disease, was published this month in Nature Medicine.
