Revolutionary new blood test can detect Alzheimer's with 90% accuracy

A revolutionarynew blood test can detect if a patient is suffering from memory loss due to Alzheimer's disease, with 90 per cent accuracy. The convenience of a blood test means that patients can receive accurate diagnoses without splurging extra cash oncurrent diagnostic methods where expensive scans and spinal fluid samples are used.

Comparatively, neurologists and memory specialists are able to correctly diagnose Alzheimer's in only 73 per cent of their cases. As for primary care doctors, the figure further plummets to only a 61 per cent accuracy rate.

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden published the study in JAMA, titled, "Blood Biomarkers to Detect Alzheimer Disease in Primary Care and Secondary Care" on Sunday (Jul 28).

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To conduct the blood test, the scientists attempted to evaluate a combination of protein ratiosfound in human serum that can accurately detect the disease. The test measurestau protein 217 (or p-tau217 for short) and amyloid - both of whichare biomarkers used to detect mild cognitive impairment and early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

In some countries, in order to receive medicines for Alzheimer's, the patient needs to prove that they have an accumulation of amyloids in their brain. Accumulation of amyloids is one of the indicators of Alzheimer's disease which the blood test conducted by researchers at Lund University attempted to find.

“Increases in p tau-217 concentrations in the blood are quite profound in Alzheimer’s disease. At the dementia stage of the disease, levels are more than 8 times higher compared with elderly without Alzheimer’s,”study coauthor Dr Sebastian Palmqvist was quoted as saying by CNN.

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Reliability of blood test

To confirm whether the blood test was reliable or not,Palmqvist and his team zeroed in on 1213 patients who were being evaluated for Alzheimer's by their family doctors or specialists between February 2020 and January 2024. As it turns out, the blood test predicts Alzheimer's with a 90 per cent accuracy.

"This blood test (the APS2) had high diagnostic accuracy for identifying Alzheimer's disease among individuals with cognitive symptoms in primary and secondary care, providing superior performance compared with the diagnostic accuracy after standard clinical evaluation," the test results showed.

Once fully vetted, highly accurate blood tests could change the game in the speed in which doctors can conduct Alzheimer’s trials and get to the next new medication.

(With inputs from agencies)