Promising research on blood tests to screen for Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's is believed to initiate when a sticky, misshapen protein known as beta-amyloid leads to the formation of brain-clogging plaques and tangles, which are associated with the destruction of neurons.

Currently, confirming beta-amyloid buildup requires expensive brain scans or invasive spinal taps.

That's where blood screening tests could play a role.

In an online issue of the journal JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association , Dr. Oskar Hansson, a professor of clinical memory research at Lund University in Sweden, and his team report that a combination of blood tests for specific forms of beta-amyloid and tau proteins correctly identified whether the study participants had Alzheimer's about 90 per cent of the time.

The researchers stressed that the experiment needs to be repeated to see how the test fares in more diverse populations and future studies should evaluate how the use of blood tests for these biomarkers influences clinical care.