Blood Test Predicts Alzheimer's Disease with Over 90% Accuracy

Alzheimer’s disease impacts one in five women and one in ten men over their lifetimes, yet diagnostic tools are still often cumbersome and not widely accessible in primary care settings. Although specialized memory clinics frequently use advanced diagnostic methods like PET scans and cerebrospinal fluid tests, there is a significant need for simpler, quicker diagnostic tools that can be used in primary care. Now, a commercially available blood test for Alzheimer’s has demonstrated approximately 90% reliability in primary care settings, representing a major development for individuals seeking assistance for memory loss and suspected of having this neurological disease.

Research on this innovative blood testing method, which evaluates levels of Plasma Phospho-Tau217, commenced in 2019 with studies showing that the blood test can detect Alzheimer 's-related changes even before symptoms appear and monitor the disease's progression. Earlier this year, results indicated that this blood test is as reliable as, and sometimes better than, cerebrospinal fluid tests for diagnosing the disease. The latest study conducted at Lund University (Lund, Sweden) and published in the renowned journal JAMA, is the first to evaluate the test’s reliability in routine healthcare settings, including both primary and specialist healthcare. The study involved 1,213 individuals with mild memory symptoms, which may be an early indicator of Alzheimer’s. Of these participants, 515 were assessed in primary care and 698 in specialist memory clinics.

Participants underwent the blood test, and the results were later validated through cerebrospinal fluid tests that detect Alzheimer’s disease pathology. The blood test’s reliability for identifying Alzheimer’s disease was about 90%, which was then compared with the diagnostic accuracy of doctors in primary or specialist care before they had access to the results of the blood or cerebrospinal fluid tests. Accuracy rates for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease were 61% among primary care doctors and 73% among specialists. The simplicity and accuracy of this blood test represent significant progress in diagnosing Alzheimer’s, providing a straightforward way to exclude the disease in primary care settings. This is vital since memory loss can also arise from other treatable conditions such as depression or chronic fatigue.

“The next steps include establishing clear clinical guidelines for the blood test’s use in healthcare,” said Professor Oskar Hansson from Lund University who co-led the study. “The test is already available in the USA and is likely to become available in many other countries soon. Initially, it will mainly be used in specialist memory clinics, and it may take approximately one to two years to implement guidelines and training in primary care.”

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