Scientists Develop Blood Test For Alzheimer's Disease

Although current blood tests can accurately detect abnormalities in amyloid and tau proteins, detecting markers of nerve cell damage that are specific to the brain has been harder. [Prof Thomas Karikari at the University of Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania] and his colleagues around the world focused on developing an antibody-based blood test that would detect a particular form of tau protein called brain-derived tau, which is specific to Alzheimer's disease. They tested it in 600 patients at various stages of Alzheimer's and found that levels of the protein correlated well with levels of tau in the CSF, and could reliably distinguish Alzheimer's from other neurodegenerative diseases. Protein levels also closely corresponded with the severity of amyloid plaques and tau tangles in brain tissue from people who had died with Alzheimer's.