The blood test reveals brain damage due to Alzheimer's disease

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Wednesday, January 23

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A simple blood test reveals brain damage caused by Alzheimer's disease before the first clinical symptoms of the disease, including long-term memory loss, according to a study by leading researchers. German and American researchers.

"The lack of effective treatment of Alzheimer's disease at the present time is due in part to the fact that current therapeutic approaches are starting very late," said Mathis Joker, a researcher at the German Center for Disease. Neurology and the Herte Institute for Clinical Brain Research.

Joker, the lead author of the study published in Nature Medicine, and his colleagues took a different perspective than other research aimed at observing "nerve death".

The researchers' experience is focused on the nerve yarn, a structural protein that is part of the internal structure of nerve cells.

When nerve cells damage the brain or die, the nervous flow infiltrates into the cerebrospinal fluid where the brain and spinal cord swim, and from there it travels through the bloodstream.

Joker and his team collaborated with researchers at the University of Washington Medical School in San Luis, Missouri, to investigate the possibility that high levels of this protein in the blood reflect neurological damage, for example when A large amount of nerve floss is detected in the cerebrospinal fluid.

The researchers badyzed data and samples from over 400 people who joined the Hernencia Dominante (DIAN) study of De De Alzheimer's led by the University of Washington, which included a group of families where the disease appeared to a young person age for genetic reasons.

Of the participants, 247 had the genetic variant of an early infection and 162 were family members who were not affected by the disease. In the case of individuals with a genetic variant, levels in the nervous system were higher initially and increased over time, while they were low and remained stable in others. Significant changes in the blood were recorded up to 16 years before the estimated onset of Alzheimer's symptoms.

In addition, the high levels of protein mentioned in the blood can be a sign of other diseases or neurological lesions. The results of this study could therefore be applied in the future to identify brain lesions in people with neurological diseases, according to the authors.