Scientists develop world's first blood test to detect
Alzheimer's
Australian scientists in
collaboration with researchers from Japan on Thursday announced the world's
first accurate blood test for Alzheimer's disease which can detect the illness
up to 20 years before any symptoms occur.
The test, which spots the illness at
an accuracy of over 90 percent, identifies the build-up of a protein called
amyloid-beta, which is an early indicator of the disease, Xinhua news agency
reported. Up until now, the only way to determine if a patient had Alzheimer's
was by highly invasive and expensive methods, including brain scans and lumbar
punctures.
But the breakthrough by the
University of Melbourne's Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
will mean diagnosing the disease will become far easier.
"In the first instance, it will
be an invaluable tool in increasing the speed of screening potential patients
for new drug trials," said Colin Masters, Professor at Florey Institute of
Neuroscience and Mental Health.
"Progress in developing new
therapeutic strategies for Alzheimer's disease has been disappointingly
slow," Masters said. "New drugs are urgently required, and the only
way to do that is to speed up the whole process," he added. At the moment
due to the long time spans involved in pharmaceutical studies, companies
require extremely accurate predictions of who is most at risk before going
ahead with trials.
This means rigorous patient
selection is essential, and with the new test, the process should improve
exponentially. Worldwide, Alzheimer's costs $818 billion per year, with 20-40
of the population over 70 considered to be "at risk" of developing
the disease at some future point.
03.02.2018
Inaction breeds doubt and fear, action breeds confidence and courage
Dale Carnegie
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