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Today, the only way to properly diagnose Alzheimer's disease in life is by brain scans and tests of cerebrospinal fluid that must be collected by lumbar puncture. Although cumbersome and expensive, such tests provide the most accurate diagnoses for patients. Investigators at Brigham and Women's Hospital are working to develop a blood test that could replace the procedures to accurately diagnose or even predict Alzheimer's disease before symptoms appear. The Tau protein has long been implicated in Alzheimer's, however, Tao occurs as a family of related molecules that have very different properties. The Brigham team took the complexity of Tau and built assassins to measure different forms of Tau and identified a subset of Tau proteins that were specifically elevated into Alzheimer's disease. The new approach of the team is detailed in Alzheimer's & Dementia and featured in the journal's December issue.
"A blood test for Alzheimer's disease can be adjusted easily and repeatedly, with patients going to their primary care office rather than to go to a hospital," said the corresponding author Dominique Walsh, PhD, from the Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases The Brigham. "Ultimately, a blood-based test could replace cerebrospinal fluid testing and / or brain imaging. Our test is potential to do so, our test will need more validation in many more people, but if it performs in the first two quarters, Would be a transformative breakthrough. "
Wolf and colleagues developed tests capable of detecting different populations of Tao fragments in cerebrospinal fluid and blood. They showed the tests to participants who were recruited to Harvard Aging Brain learners as well as research participants at the Institute of Neurology in London. Each participant has given anoreous plasma and cerebrospinal fluid. They valued results in a second group of patients who were recruited by the Shiley-Markos Alzheimer's Research Center at the University of California, San Diego.
The team analyzed five different tests for Taw fragments, found that one, known as the NT1 statement, showed sufficient diagnostic sensitivity (ability to predict cases) and speculate (to exclude controls) to pursue its use as a potential screening tool For Alzheimer's disease. This was confirmed in both sets of patients.
While performing the experiment twice – in two sets of patients with two different demographic backgrounds – provided significant confirmation, the authors note that both groups of participants are small (65 participants and 86 participants, respectively). Larger groups of participants will need to be taught, and the authors are also interested in teaching patients over time to determine how Tau levels in blood may change as the progress of the disease and what numbers might look like before the onset of symptoms.
"We have made our data and the tools needed to perform our test are widely available because we want other research groups to test this," said Volsh. "It is important for others to validate our findings so that we can be sure that the test will work across different populations."
This article was reproduced from materials provided by Brigadier and Women's Hospital. Note: Material can be edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.
Reference:
Chen, Z., Miguel, D., Keshavan, A., Rissmann, RA, Billinton, A., Perkin, M. . . Walsh, D. M. (2018). Learn about the complexity of Extracellular Tau help develop a blood-based screen for Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimers & Dememants. DOI: 10.1016 / J.Jules2018.09.010
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