The NHS is set to launch a study that aims to investigate whether blood tests can help in the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. According to experts, diagnosing the condition much earlier on would enable patients to receive more support and new treatments to combat the disease. The five-year initiative is backed by £5m in funding from the People’s Postcode Lottery. Currently, there is no definitive test for the illness, and a diagnosis can take years.
Even though a blood test would not be able to provide a 100% diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, it could still be a straightforward and cheap way to help doctors identify patients with hidden physical signs of the disease, even before key symptoms appear. Various types of blood tests are currently in development worldwide. Some are already being used in private clinics across the US, where they search for signs of brain proteins that have leaked into the bloodstream. As tau and amyloid proteins begin to build up in the brain over a decade or more before memory loss and confusion symptoms appear, a blood test that detects their presence could be vital.
One of the potential benefits of such a test is that new Alzheimer’s drugs such as Donanemab and Lecanemab show potential in clearing some of the brain build-up caused by the protein. Currently, trials for most drugs target advanced disease stages. However, scientists believe that once symptoms manifest, the window of opportunity for detecting and preventing cognitive decline might have closed already. A blood test, therefore, could prove highly valuable in detecting amyloid build-up even before cognitive symptoms have manifested.
The NHS Blood Biomarker Challenge aims to recruit about 1,000 patients from the National Health Service to participate. The Alzheimer’s Society, Alzheimer’s Research UK, the National Institute for Health and Care Research, and the UK Dementia Research Institute at University College London are all collaborating on the project. The next hurdle will be to get the UK regulators to approve the test, in addition to researching its cost-effectiveness for the NHS. Having a measurable biomarker for the disease could provide a way to monitor how new treatments for Alzheimer’s work
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More