United States: A newly published study showed that the reason behind memory loss could be identified if it happened due to Alzheimer’s disease, using blood tests with almost 90 percent accuracy.
More about the finding
The researchers conducting the test at Lund University in Sweden found that a revolutionary blood test can perform far better than the diagnoses already made by primary and specialist healthcare providers.
The findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed the blood test called p-tau217 has the potential to find out if memory loss is caused by Alzheimer’s with 91 percent accuracy, as compared to accuracy shown by specialists and primary care providers as 73 percent and 61 percent respectively.
More about the finding
Along with the availability of gold-standard methods for discovering Alzheimer’s disease presence, which are very expensive, they are hard to avail by many patients and require long waits to access one too.
Therefore, the researchers hope the newly discovered methods could streamline Alzheimer’s diagnoses and speed up treatment.
The student stated, “Importantly, even in places with limited access to these new therapies, an accurate, biomarker-verified Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis can have a positive effect on clinical care and prognostication,” as woodtv.com reported.
More about the new test
As per the reports, the p-tau217 test calculates the range of presence of a certain blood peptide, a bio-marker of neurological damage due to Alzheimer’s disease.
Therefore, the test certain the levels of presence of that marker, which could help the doctors to identify the level of cognitive decline and if it is due to Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia.
More work needs to be done – Experts
As the experts mention, despite the high accuracy of the blood tests, they are still being determined, though researchers hope the method can reduce strain on specialist care and make it more accessible for those who need it, as woodtv.com reported.
The Mayo Clinic generally uses brain imaging methods such as MRI, CT, or PET scans to diagnose Alzheimer’s in individuals. However, these lab tests could also identify the presence of amyloid and tau levels, but they “aren’t widely available and coverage may be limited.”
According to the CDC, Alzheimer’s is one of the more prevalent forms of dementia, which is often defined as a “progressive disease beginning with mild memory loss and possibly leading to loss of the ability to carry on a conversation and respond to the environment.”