There is a new blood test for Alzheimer’s disease, and, according to a new study, it boasts a 90% accuracy rate. That’s significantly more precise than your average primary care doctor, making the discovery a potential major step in the fight against dementia.
Published in JAMA Neurology, the study tested 1,213 people with an average age of 74 who were undergoing cognitive evaluations in Sweden. Researchers administered a blood test capable of detecting a crucial biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease: p-tau217. The test results were then combined with blood measures of another important biomarker, beta-amyloid 40/42, to determine the final results.
“Increases in (p-tau217) 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 co-author Dr. Sebastian Palmqvist, an associate professor and senior consultant neurologist at Lund University, told CNN in an email.
The researchers then administered spinal fluid taps to confirm the combined blood test method is capable of detecting early cases of the disease with nearly 50% better accuracy than a primary care doctor. According to the study, neurologists can correctly diagnose Alzheimer’s around 73% of the time, with primary care doctors getting it right only 61% of the time.
Preventive neurologist Dr. Richard Isaacson, director of research at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, was not involved in the study, but said blood tests designed to detect the disease are still far from perfect.
“There’s no one more bullish on these tests than I am, but Alzheimer’s blood tests aren’t fully definitive yet,” he told CNN. “If it is a positive test, it still needs to be confirmed via PET scan or spinal tap. If it’s a negative result, that’s reassuring, but if it’s borderline, we still don’t know what that means.”
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