[ad_1]
With the help of current techniques, Alzheimer's disease, the most common cause of dementia, can only be detected when typical plaques have formed in the brain.
With this test, Alzheimer's disease can be detected about 8 years ago, before the onset of symptoms.
The researchers have come up with a new test that could help doctors detect Alzheimer's disease eight years before the onset of the first symptoms.
With the help of current techniques, Alzheimer's disease, the most common cause of dementia, can only be detected when typical plaques have formed in the brain.
At this point, therapy no longer seems possible. However, the first changes caused by Alzheimer's disease occur at the level of proteins up to 20 years earlier.
"Once the amyloid plaques have formed, it seems that the disease can no longer be treated," said co-author of the study, Andreas Nabers, of the Ruhr University in Bochum , in Germany.
In patients with Alzheimer's disease, the beta-amyloid protein folds incorrectly due to pathological changes well before the onset of the first symptoms.
A team of researchers led by Klaus Gerwert of the Ruhr University in Bochum successfully diagnosed this referral with the help of a simple blood test. As a result, the disease could be detected about eight years before the appearance of the first clinical symptoms.
However, experiments have shown that the test is not suitable for clinical applications as it allows nine percent of false positive diagnoses.
In order to increase the number of correctly identified Alzheimer's cases, researchers have now introduced the two-level diagnostic method.
To this end, they use the original blood test to identify high-risk individuals. Subsequently, they add a dementia-specific biomarker, tau, to perform additional tests with test participants whose diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease was positive at first.
If both biomarkers show a positive result, the likelihood of contracting Alzheimer's disease is high, said the study published in the journal Alzheimer & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring.
"With the combination of the two badyzes, 87 out of 100 patients were correctly identified in our study," said Gerwert.
"It is now possible to launch new clinical studies involving test participants at an early stage of the disease," added Gerwert.
(This story has not been changed by NDTV staff and is generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)
Source link
