The Alzheimer's blood test could boost research after several unsuccessful attempts

A blood test could be used to diagnose Alzheimer's disease before the onset of symptoms, offering an alternative to costly brain tests and speeding up recruitment for essential clinical trials.

Scientists at the University of Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis have decided to develop a blood test that can be administered quickly and on a larger scale to CT scans commonly used to detect clumps of amyloid proteins in the brain. , obvious signs of Alzheimer's disease.

While initial attempts were not as accurate as PET scans, the researchers found that they could increase accuracy by also taking into account the age of the patients and the presence of the APOE4 gene variant.

The results were rechecked with the help of a conventional PET-scan, and the accuracy of the test reached 94% in a study involving 158 people.

The study used mbad spectrometry to measure the relationship between amyloid beta 42 and amyloid beta 50 in the blood – a known ratio for falling when amyloid deposits increase in the brain.

The results of the study published in the journal Neurology could be important for pharmaceutical companies looking for ways to intercept the disease and treat it before cognitive decline sets in.

So far, attempts have been unsuccessful and it is urgent to identify patients earlier in order to help them in future trials of Alzheimer's drugs.

The study has been widely commented in the media, with experts stressing its importance for Alzheimer's research.

Randall Bateman, a professor of neurology at the University of Washington's Faculty of Medicine and head of the study, told The Guardian, "Right now, we are selecting patients for clinical trials with brain tests, which take time and are expensive; Registration of participants takes years.

"But with a blood test, we could potentially track thousands of people every month. This means that we can more effectively enroll participants in clinical trials, which will help us find treatments faster. "

Pharma's attempts to develop diseases that halt or slow down the rate of cognitive decline, and trial after trial have yielded negative results.

The last drug approved by the FDA to treat Alzheimer's disease was memantine in 2003, although a sustained-release version was approved in 2014.

Earlier this year, Biogen's aducanumab became the last Alzheimer's drug to fail in a major trial, wiping out billions of dollars worth of the company's value.