Alzheimer’s Blood Test Can Diagnose Patients Faster, Cheaper, Easier

A new blood test has been developed to diagnose Alzheimer’s more accurately and affordably, according to research published in JAMA Network Open.

The test, which can determine if patients with dementia have Alzheimer’s, can identify the signs of the disease more than 20 years before memory and thinking issues can exist, the study said.

The study was presented at the Alzheimer’s Association Conference and marks a bright spot for the nearly 6 million people in the U.S. and about 30 million worldwide that have the disease – a number that is expected to double by 2025.

Researchers and medical experts predict that the test would be available for clinical use in 2-3 years at an affordable rate that is simple to diagnose in people that are displaying cognitive problems.

“This blood test very, very accurately predicts who’s got Alzheimer’s disease in their brain, including people who seem to be normal,” Dr. Michael Weiner, an Alzheimer’s disease researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study, told the New York Times. “It’s not a cure, it’s not a treatment, but you can’t treat the disease without being able to diagnose it. And accurate, low-cost diagnosis is really exciting, so it’s a breakthrough.”

The blood test is an encouraging sign for researchers that say that the results could speed up the search for new treatment by making it faster and cheaper to screen patients for a clinical trial – a process that now takes years and costs millions of dollars through PET scans and spinal taps, the Times noted.

The test works by measuring a form of tau protein found in tangles that are located throughout the brain in an Alzheimer patient, which was found to be quite accurate in a study of 1,402 people in Sweden, Colombia, and the U.S., the study said.

“This test really opens up the possibility of being able to use a blood test in the clinic to diagnose someone more definitely with Alzheimer’s,” Maria Carrillo, chief science officer at the Alzheimer’s Association, told the Times. “Amazing, isn’t it? I mean, really, five years ago, I would have told you it was science fiction.”