Blood Test Potentially Predicts Alzheimer’s Disease

A blood test has the potential to predict Alzheimer’s disease before patients start showing symptoms and it could be the key to curing this devastating illness.

Current biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are limited because they are time consuming, invasive or expensive and while blood-based biomarkers may be a more attractive option, none can currently detect preclinical AD with the required sensitivity and specificity.

Scientists at Georgetown University Medical Center (Washington DC, USA) enrolled cognitively healthy adults age 70 years and older, in a five year observational study. Over the course of the study, 74 participants met criteria for amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) or mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). Blood samples were taken from selected participants.

To measure the biomarkers the team used liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry methods using an Acquity H-class Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography (UPLC) system and mass spectrometry was performed on a quadrupole time-of-flight (Q-TOF) instrument, the Xevo G2 QTOF (Waters Corporation, Milford, MA, USA). Targeted metabolomic analysis of plasma samples was performed using the Absolute-IDQ P180 kit (BIOCRATES; Innsbruck, Austria).

The investigators discovered and validated a set of ten lipids from peripheral blood that predicted phenoconversion to either amnestic mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease within a two to three year timeframe with over 90% accuracy. This biomarker panel, reflecting cell membrane integrity, may be sensitive to early neurodegeneration of preclinical Alzheimer's disease.

Janet B. Kreizman, BA, the CEO of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC), said, “This discovery is a potentially enormous breakthrough in the fight against Alzheimer's. If research aimed at a cure for Alzheimer's is to move forward, it is crucial that Alzheimer's clinical trials find a way to recruit patients who are still asymptomatic, since they are the ones most likely to respond to treatment.” The expanded study will be presented at the upcoming AACC Annual Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo, which will be held July 27–31, 2014 in Chicago (IL, USA).

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Georgetown University Medical Center 
Waters Corporation 
BIOCRATES