Could a blood test for Alzheimer’s disease soon be on clinical laboratory test menus nationwide? Perhaps so. A recent Associated Press (AP) article that was picked up by NBC News and other healthcare publications reported that experimental test results presented during the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) in July suggest the Holy Grail of dementia tests—one where the specimen can be collected in a doctor’s office during a routine screening exam—may be close at hand.
The AP story noted that “half a dozen research groups gave new results on various experimental tests, including one that seems 88% accurate at indicating Alzheimer’s risk.” And Richard Hodes, MD, Director of the National Institute on Aging, told AP, “In the past year, we’ve seen a dramatic acceleration in progress [on Alzheimer’s tests]. This has happened at a pace that is far faster than any of us would have expected.”
This could be a boon for medical laboratories seeking way to contribute more value to patient care. Especially among Alzheimer’s patients, who account for as many as 70% of all dementia cases.
Plasma Biomarker for Predicting Alzheimer’s
One of the experimental blood tests presented at the AAIC involved a 2018 study into “the potential clinical utility of plasma biomarkers in predicting brain amyloid-β burden at an individual level. These plasma biomarkers also have cost-benefit and scalability advantages over current techniques, potentially enabling broader clinical access and efficient population screening,” the researchers stated an article they published in Nature.
Dark Daily reported on this study in “Researchers in Two Countries Develop Blood Tests That Detect Alzheimer’s Decades Before Symptoms Appear; Could Eventually Give Clinical Laboratories a Diagnostic Tool,” June 4, 2018. The test “measures abnormal versions of the protein [amyloid beta] that forms the plaques in the brain that are the hallmark of Alzheimer’s,” the AP story reported.
AP also reported that Japanese scientists at the AAIC presented results of a validation test conducted on 201 people who had either Alzheimer’s, other types of dementia, or little or no symptoms. They found that the test “correctly identified 92% of people who had Alzheimer’s and correctly ruled out 85% who did not have it, for an overall accuracy of 88%.”
Akinori Nakamura, MD, PhD, of the National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology in Obu, Japan, was a member of the research team and first author of the research paper. He told the AP that the test results “closely matched those from the top tests used now—three types of brain scans and a mental assessment exam.”
Koichi Tanaka is a Japanese engineer who won the Nobel prize winner for chemistry. He heads the Koichi Tanaka Research Lab at Shimadzu Corp. (OTCMKTS:SHMZF) in Kyoto, Japan, and was on the team that developed the Amyloid beta biomarker test that was presented at AAIC. He told Bloomberg, “Our finding overturned the common belief that it wouldn’t be possible to estimate amyloid accumulation in the brain from blood. We’re now being chased by others, and the competition is intensifying.”
But Tanaka cautions that the test needs further study before it is ready for clinical use, and that for now “it belongs in the hands of drug developers and research laboratories,” Bloomberg reported.
Other Studies into Developing an Alzheimer’s Biomarker
Alzheimer’s is usually diagnosed after symptoms appear, such as memory loss. To arrive at their diagnoses, doctors often rely on medical history, brain imaging (MRI, CT), PET, and measurement of amyloid in spinal fluid.
An article published on Alzforum, a website and news service dedicated to the research and treatment for Alzheimer’s and other related disorders, noted a study by King’s College London researchers who, using mass spectrometry, “found a panel of biomarkers that predicted with almost 90% accuracy whether cognitively normal people had a positive amyloid scan.”
Nicholas Ashton, PhD, neuroscientist and Wallenberg Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and first author of the King’s College study, explained that “Amyloid-burden and neurofilament light polypeptide (NFL) peptides were important in predicting Alzheimer’s, but alone they weren’t as predictable as when we combined them with novel proteins related to amyloid PET.”
The researchers published their study earlier this year in Science Advances. “Using an unbiased mass spectrometry approach, we have found and replicated with high accuracy, specificity, and sensitivity a plasma protein classifier reflecting amyloid-beta burden in a cognitively unimpaired cohort,” the researchers wrote.
Meanwhile, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis, along with the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a member of the Helmholtz Association, stated in a news release that a blood test they developed works by detecting leaks of NFL before the onset of symptoms. When the protein is found in cerebrospinal fluid, it could be a sign that Alzheimer’s may develop, as well as point to other neurodegenerative conditions such as multiple sclerosis, brain injury, or stroke, the researchers stated.
“This is something that would be easy to incorporate into a screening test in a neurology clinic,” Brian Gordon, PhD, Assistant Professor of Radiology at Washington University’s Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, and an author of the study, stated in the news release.
These parallel studies into screening for Alzheimer’s by researchers worldwide are intriguing. The favorable results suggest that someday there may be a screen for Alzheimer’s using a clinical laboratory blood test.
With Alzheimer’s affecting nearly six million Americans of all ages, such an assay would enable clinical laboratories to help many people.
—Donna Marie Pocius
Related Information:
Scientists Close in On Blood Test for Alzheimer’s
Advances in the Global Search for Blood Markers for Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias
A Blood Test Can Predict Dementia. Trouble Is, There’s No Cure
Plasma Biomarker for Amyloid Correlates with Alzheimer’s Progression, Study Finds
High Performance Plasma Amyloid-β Biomarkers for Alzheimer’s Disease
Panel Blood Markers Signals Amyloid in Brain
A Plasma Protein Classifier for Predicting Amyloid Burden for Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease
Blood-Brain Barrier Breakdown is an Early Biomarker of Human Cognitive Dysfunction
