New Blood Test Can Predict Alzheimer's Progression 3.5 Years Early

 

Researchers at King's College London have made a groundbreaking discovery that a simple blood test can predict a person's risk of Alzheimer's disease years before a clinical diagnosis. The study, published in the journal Brain, showed that certain components in the bloodstream can promote or slow down the processes of neurogenesis, which is the formation of new brain cells in the hippocampus, the region associated with memory and the early stages of Alzheimer's.

Previous studies have only been able to study neurogenesis in the later stages of Alzheimer's after an autopsy. The researchers at King's College London hoped that a non-invasive blood test could chart Alzheimer's development by following biomarkers in the blood.

Over a period of several years, the researchers collected samples from 56 people with mild cognitive impairment, 36 of whom were eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer's. They treated brain cells with the blood samples and observed how they responded as Alzheimer's progressed.

They found that the blood from people who developed Alzheimer's led to decreases in cell growth and division, and an increase in cell death. However, at the same time, those samples also boosted the conversion of young, immature brain cells into hippocampal neurons.

The study's lead author, Professor Sandrine Thuret, said in a release, "Previous studies have shown that blood from young mice can have a rejuvenating effect on the cognition of older mice by improving hippocampal neurogenesis. This gave us the idea of modeling the process of neurogenesis in a dish using human brain cells and human blood."

Some of the earliest blood samples collected demonstrated effects on neurogenesis about three-and-a-half years before the person received a clinical Alzheimer's diagnosis.

This research is groundbreaking as it has the potential to predict the onset of Alzheimer's early in a non-invasive fashion. The findings will have to be validated in a larger and more diverse group of people before it can be developed into a diagnostic test or a tool to organize the participants of a clinical trial for an Alzheimer's treatment. Other blood tests have focused on detecting the remnants of brain proteins known as amyloid and tau. The FDA cleared its first in vitro test for the early detection of Alzheimer's in May 2022.