Editor: Akhmetova Aigerim
Translator: Bolysbek Dana
Author: Bolysbek Dana
About 50 million people live with Alzheimer's disease, the most common type of dementia. Although its exact mechanism is not fully understood, Alzheimer's disease results from an accumulation of proteins in the brain that are thought to lead to the death of nerve cells. Some of these proteins are traceable in patients' blood, and tests based on their concentrations can be used to diagnose disease.
Scientists from Sweden and Britain now believe that blood tests can be used to predict Alzheimer's disease years before the onset of symptoms. They developed and tested individual risk models based on the levels of two key proteins in blood samples taken from over 550 patients with mild cognitive impairment.
A model based on these two proteins had an 88 percent success rate in predicting the onset of Alzheimer's disease in the same patients over four years. "We need further validation of the results but in the context of other recent findings this could be a transformative step to earlier diagnosis, as well as testing new treatments at earlier stages of the disease."- the scientists said.
Source: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-11-blood-accurately-alzheimer.html