Alzheimer's Blood Test Developed

Posted on October 16, 2007

The BBC reports that a new blood test can identify Alzheimer's six years before symptoms of the disease start to show. The article says the blood test has a 90% accuracy

The test identifies changes in a handful of proteins that cells use to convey messages to one another.
The US researchers found it could indicate who had Alzheimer's, as well as who was likely to develop the condition, with 90% accuracy.
The work, led by Stanford University, features in Nature Medicine.
One of the most distressing aspects of Alzheimer's disease is the difficulty in determining whether mild memory problems are the beginning of an inevitable mental decline.

It sounds very promising. Early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease should make it easier to eventually halt or reverse the progress of the disease. Hopefully, the test won't falsely identify someone as having Alzheimer's. You wouldn't want a situation where people were falsely accused of having a disease which causes progressive mental decline.

ALZHEIMERS