Diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease: simple and reliable
Americans have identified four biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease
Copper news
American scientists have proposed a new method for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease from blood samples, Medical News Today (Alzheimer's Blood Test – Scientists Closing In) reports. A report on the study conducted by a team of specialists led by William Hu from Emory University School of Medicine is published in the journal Neurology (Hu et al., Plasma multianalyte profiling in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease).
600 people were selected to participate in the first stage of the study, including patients from two medical centers located in Pennsylvania and Missouri, as well as healthy volunteers. Ha and his colleagues analyzed the content of 190 different proteins and peptides in the blood of the participants. As a result, 17 substances associated with the presence of dementia or Alzheimer's disease were selected.
At the second stage of the work, scientists assessed the level of 17 potential biomarkers in the blood of 566 Americans suffering exclusively from senile dementia. According to the results of experiments, four markers reliably indicated the presence of Alzheimer's disease. These substances turned out to be apolipoprotein E, brain natriuretic peptide, C-reactive protein and pancreatic polypeptide.
Currently, only two methods are used to diagnose Alzheimer's disease: positron emission tomography, as well as determining the level of the pathological beta-amyloid protein in the cerebrospinal fluid. The first of the studies is expensive, and the second requires the insertion of a needle into the space between the membranes of the spinal cord.
According to the researchers, the diagnostic technique based on a blood test is devoid of these drawbacks. However, its specificity will have to be evaluated in the course of further studies, since too few patients with dementia caused by disorders other than Alzheimer's disease participated in the work of the Ha group.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru16.08.2012