Blood Test Foresees Decline into Alzheimer’s Disease
Researchers have identified a blood-based biomarker, p-tau217, that can predict the risk of Alzheimer's disease years before symptoms appear. The study suggests this could enable earlier intervention and better clinical trial design.
Why it matters
This discovery represents a significant advancement in early diagnostics for neurodegenerative diseases, potentially transforming patient care.
A blood-based biomarker could predict a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease years before any symptoms arise, research suggests.
Plasma levels of phosphorylated tau 217 (p‑tau217) may one day help identify at-risk individuals before overt signs of dementia, enabling the pre-emptive use of disease-modifying therapies.
Higher plasma p‑tau217 levels were associated with a greater risk of progressing to cognitive impairment in previously unaffected older adults, and they also predicted faster levels of decline.
The research findings appear in JAMA and were simultaneously presented this week at the annual Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London.
“In this longitudinal study of several selected cohorts, plasma p-tau217 provided long-term prognostic information for individuals who were cognitively unimpaired at baseline, laying the groundwork for possible future development of individualized risk prediction scores,” proposed Rachel Buckley, PhD, from Mass General Brigham, and co-workers in their published work.
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