Alzheimer’s disease continues to be a complex disorder and despite its high prevalence, there is no cure. Moreover, current diagnostic techniques are not helpful for early diagnosis of the disease and consequently disable people from getting the right treatment.
However, emerging evidence suggests that signs of Alzheimer’s disease could be detected in the blood up to 20 years before symptoms appear.
A team of Australian scientists have developed a simple, cheap and non-invasive blood test that could help predict a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease up to 20 years before symptoms show.
The Australian National University (ANU) researchers have developed a way to to use nanotechnology, combined with artificial intelligence (AI), to analyse proteins in the blood to search for signs of early neurodegeneration.
The team developed an ultra-thin silicon chip containing “nanopores” that analyse the proteins one at a time with help from an advanced AI algorithm.
In this process, a small amount of blood is placed on the silicon chip and inserted into a portable device, about the size of a mobile phone, which uses the AI algorithm to search for signatures corresponding to the proteins that show signs of early-onset Alzheimer’s.
The findings were published in the journal Small Methods. It is noteworthy that the same test can be used to screen for multiple neurological conditions at the same time, including Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Reportedly, few US-based companies have now developed Alzheimer’s blood tests that are available for consumers to purchase, either directly from the supplier or at the request of the patient’s doctor.
Currently, Alzheimer’s disease is diagnosed using a combination of tests. According to experts, biomarker-based test check signs of the disease in a person’s body, in a brain imaging scan or sample of cerebrospinal fluid.
There are three major signs of Alzheimer’s disease:
- An accumulation of amyloid-beta plaques outside brain cells
- Tau protein tangles inside brain cells
- Brain cell death (known as neurodegeneration).
However, there is also a possibility that some people may have biomarker changes but may never develop Alzheimer’s disease symptoms.
One of the available tests, PrecivityAD, has been approved for doctors to use in people who exhibit symptoms of Alzheimer’s in the United States. Reportedly, it also has been deemed safe for use in the European Union.
According to experts, if a patient has cognitive symptoms, then the doctor will send a blood sample to the company and they will measure the amyloid-beta ratio. Reportedly, the company also looks for another protein, called apolipoprotein E, to investigate the patient’s genetic risk of Alzheimer’s. The results will be out in a couple of days.
Reportedly, this test has been used in several studies and has shown a high correlation with signs of Alzheimer’s disease. However, the accuracy and prediction of disease progression is not guaranteed.
It is noteworthy that scientists are now looking at how accurate tests looking at concentrations of tau protein in a patient’s blood are.
