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A simple blood test may be able to tell you whether you have Alzheimer's disease and, in some cases, it can detect the disease decades before symptoms set in.
Research presented at this year's virtual Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC) on Tuesday and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) focused on a new blood test that can detect a specific type of protein that serves as an indicator for both amyloid plaques and tau tangles — two defining features of Alzheimer's disease, which is the most common form of dementia.
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Alzheimer's is typically diagnosed by doctors through a series of memory tests and behavior evaluations, which some experts say can be inaccurate. If you want to know whether you have the disease before its devastating symptoms appear, then expensive, invasive and often inaccessible brain scans and spinal fluid tests are the only ways to tell.
That is why a simple blood test would “be a game-changer in the fight against Alzheimer's disease,” says Eric Reiman, M.D., executive director of the Banner Alzheimer's Institute and a senior author on the JAMA study.
Early diagnosis is critical despite lack of cure
Although there is no cure for Alzheimer's, which affects more than 5 million Americans and about 50 million people worldwide, experts argue that diagnosing the disease as early as possible is still important.
Inexpensive and accurate testing technologies, for example, could help advance research by identifying “the right people for clinical trials and by tracking the impact of therapies being tested,” Maria C. Carrillo, chief science officer for the Alzheimer's Association, explained in a statement. Better diagnostics would also allow more patients access to clinical trials, where they could benefit from potentially lifesaving therapies.
What's more, an early diagnosis would give patients and families more time to plan for the future and to experiment with approved drugs that can help alleviate symptoms of the disease.
"At least in the United States, 60 percent of patients with dementia never have a diagnosis in their lifetime. They never have an opportunity to assess potentially reversible problems; their families are often left to fend for themselves,” Reiman says. “They don't quite understand that there is life after diagnosis, even though there's not much we can do to slow the progression just yet.”
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