A research team led by Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona, in collaboration with the Sant Pau Hospitalrevealed that the plasma biomarker ‘pTau181’ in blood has a sensitivity of 94% and a accuracy close to 80% to identify patients with high risk of developing Alzheimer’s in the early stages.
As reported by Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona, this finding was discovered in the largest study carried out to date worldwide on the clinical usefulness of plasma biomarkers in early detection of Alzheimer’s. The results are based on a sample of more than 2,000 patients and were published in the prestigious magazine ‘eBioMedicine’ (from The Lancet group).
Alzheimer’s, responsible for 60% of dementia cases
Alzheimer’s, responsible for 60-80% of dementia cases, It remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide without preventative treatment or cure. Most diagnoses are made when The neuronal damage is already irreversible. For this reason, finding a non-invasive detection and diagnosis method in the most initial stages of the disease currently constitutes one of the great challenges in clinical practice.
In this context, the Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona study showed through a simple blood test that it constitutes an “effective, non-invasive and accessible” method for early detection of the disease.
“Especially significant” results
The results are “especially significant”, since the use of this biomarker could reduce the need for lumbar punctures by 39%one of the invasive procedures that are currently used to confirm the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and which consists of the extraction of cerebrospinal fluid.
In addition, it would open the range of possibilities to diagnose the disease in those cases in which, for medical reasons, an examination cannot be performed. lumbar puncture. This advance in research opens the door to a more “accessible” diagnosis for primary health centers, thus improving the possibility of detecting the disease in stages where intervention can still be done.
The doctor leading the study, Amanda Cano He highlighted that plasma biomarkers will revolutionize “not only the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, but also the selection of patients for clinical trials and the evaluation of new treatments,” facilitating the implementation of precision medicine in this area.
This study “reinforces” the importance of ‘pTau181’ plasma as a clinical tool and will help predict which patients could progress towards dementia such as Alzheimer’s, thus allowing more effective follow-up.