Blood Test May Predict Alzheimer's Disease

Blood Test May Predict Alzheimer’s Disease

More than 35 million people around the world experience progressive dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease. Currently there is no cure and no effective treatments for this degenerative condition, which may be due to the inability to diagnosis the disease before cognitive impairment begins. New research has found, however, that a simple test identifying 10 specific lipids in the blood may be able to predict whether a healthy person will develop dementia within the next 2 years to 3 years.

The study included 525 healthy participants age 70 and older whose blood was analyzed periodically over the study’s 5-year duration. Of the initial study sample, 74 were diagnosed with mild Alzheimer’s disease or memory impairment. The researchers then compared the blood biomarkers of 53 participants with either Alzheimer’s disease or memory impairment to 53 healthy controls. They found that 10 lipids seemed to identify the breakdown of neural cell membranes among those participants who developed Alzheimer’s disease or memory impairment.

“The lipid panel was able to distinguish with 90% accuracy these two distinct groups: cognitively normal participants who would progress to Alzheimer’s disease or memory impairment within 2 years to 3 years, and those who would remain normal in the near future,” explains corresponding author, Howard Federoff, MD, PhD, a professor of neurology and executive vice president for health sciences at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, DC.

Study authors suggest that, after additional clinical trials, these findings may lead to the development of a disease biomarker test that could help identify individuals at increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease or memory impairment. The study, “Plasma Phospholipids Identify Antecedent Memory Impairment in Older Adults,” was published in the April issue of Nature Medicine.

Hygiene Connection E-Newsletter

April 2014