Pitt researchers have developed a blood test to identify individuals most at risk of developing neurological symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.
“By using blood measures that define signs of amyloid pathology and neurodegeneration, we can identify who is going to decline fastest and should be prioritized for intervention,” said Thomas Karikari, assistant professor of psychiatry in the School of Medicine and one of the authors of the study published in Nature Communications.
The latest research builds on work Karikari has done with colleagues at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The research shows that including a protein called brain-derived tau, or BD-tau, in a diagnostic panel of blood biomarkers can help identify which individuals are most at risk for Alzheimer’s-associated dementias and memory loss, giving doctors the opportunity to effectively tailor therapies to each patient’s prognosis.
To diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, neurologists rely on a panel of blood-, spinal fluid- or brain-imaging-based biomarkers in addition to performing neurological examinations. Detecting amyloid plaques and the phosphorylated form of tau tangles—abnormal proteins that accumulate in the brain—has, in recent years, become a reliable way to identify many of the components of Alzheimer’s pathology.
In the new study, which included healthy participants as well as patients admitted to memory clinics in Norway, Sweden and Spain, Karikari and his team found that people whose blood samples were positive for phospho-tau and BD-tau and had high levels of amyloid in their brains had the quickest cognitive decline compared with patients who had signs of amyloid pathology but no detectable BD-tau presence.
New anti-amyloid therapies recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration must be given early in Alzheimer's progression to succeed. That makes it especially important to be able to readily identify patients who may not yet be noticeably symptomatic.
Read more about the research in the news release.