Blood Test Could Improve Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s

(VitalNews.org) – A simple blood test may change the entire way that people are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s due to a new discovery.

A blood test is now able to diagnose Alzheimer’s in seconds, as opposed to more difficult procedures and testing that are currently utilized to diagnose it. These blood tests may take the place of brain scans or lumbar punctures. A massive project was launched for researchers in the UK to look into the blood test, allowing people to get diagnosed in seconds.

With this, researchers found that an existing blood test could make a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s better and more efficient. The blood test is intended to see where doctors must start with diagnosis and to see if you have “amyloid in the brain.”

Dr. Nicholas Ashton, the first author of this study, said, “If you’re going to receive the new drugs, you need to prove that you have amyloid in the brain,” he said. “It’s just impossible to do spinal taps and brain scans on everyone that would need it worldwide. So this is where the blood test has a huge potential.”

He says that this could even help to determine what kind of Dementia is happening, as it might not be Alzheimer’s, and so this would help guide them in the right direction.

The team researched the possibilities of this blood test and how it might help those with a diagnosis. The research was conducted on 786 people from the United States, Spain, and Canada. Their findings were quite good as they found out that the blood test could really help to diagnose without interference from any other testing.

“80% of individuals could be definitively diagnosed on a blood test without any other investigation,” Ashton said.

He continued, “It shows that blood tests can be just as accurate as more invasive and expensive tests at predicting if someone has features of Alzheimer’s disease in their brain.” It is a huge discovery and can help to diagnose people without putting them through tons of back and forth or using expensive and invasive testing unless it’s absolutely necessary.