90% accuracy! Nature breakthrough results: blood tests can "recognize" dementia protein February 2, 2018 Source: Biological Exploration of: Chen For the past 15 years, scientists around the world have been looking for a simple blood test for dementia. Recently, Nature magazine published a breakthrough result: a team of scientists from Japan and Australia developed a blood test to detect toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease with a test accuracy of 90%! Image source: Nature(DOI:10.1038/nature25456) "So far, there is no reliable method for identifying patients with early dementia, so most clinical trials are for people who have already recruited clinical symptoms. At this time, brain damage associated with beta-amyloid It has happened that it may be too late to reverse this damage." Katsuhiko Yanagisawa, a molecular biologist and co-author of the new results, said, "To date, all drug candidates developed to prevent Alzheimer's have failed in clinical trials, and many pharmaceutical companies have abandoned this field. Scientists suspect that these failures may be problems with trial design, rather than 'nothing' for the drug being tested." In fact, two methods that can now be used to identify beta-amyloid in the brain are to image the brain using positron-emission tomography or to directly measure the level of this protein in the cerebrospinal fluid from the spinal cord. Although they are all used to help recruit patients into recent clinical trials, these tests are expensive and uncomfortable. Image source: Network 1 , the new method combines two existing technologies In this new study, in order to measure the level of fragmentation of "β-amyloid" and "larger proteins derived from it" in blood samples, Yanagisawa and colleagues combined two existing techniques - immunoprecipitation And mass spectrometry. The results showed that the results of this test were consistent with the results obtained by brain imaging and spinal fluid analysis in two independent cohorts (including 122 in Japan and 252 in Australia). It is worth mentioning that individuals aged between 60 and 90 years old included in each cohort in the study were healthy, some had mild cognitive impairment, and some were Alzheimer's patients. . Scientists say that next, more and longer-term research is needed to confirm the accuracy of the test "to identify high levels of beta-amyloid in the human brain." They hope that drug developers can use this test to recruit these people into clinical trials before the patient's brain undergoes irreversible damage, making the trial more reliable. At the same time, they believe that the test has the advantage of being relatively simpler and cheaper. Image source: Network 2 , the best results seen so far For the results of this study, Simon Lovestone, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, said: "In the beginning, the idea of ​​measuring brain disease in the blood was not so practical, but now we are getting closer and closer to success. The paper provides the best results I have seen so far." In the BBC report, Dr. Abdul Hye of King's College London also said: "This study is of great significance because this is the first time a research team has demonstrated a strong association between plasma amyloid and brain and cerebrospinal fluid." In summary, the authors believe that this blood test is expected to achieve a wider range of clinical applications, as well as more effective population screening. In the end, they hope that using this cheap and simple test will help develop better ways to treat Alzheimer's. Reference materials: 1) Blood test finds toxic Alzheimer's proteins 2) Simple blood test spots dementia protein Adhesive Wound Dressing,Medical Small Wound-Care Plaster,Medical Waterproof Transfusion Wound Plaster,Medical Elastic Adhesive Aid-Band Surgimed Medical Supplies Co.,Ltd , https://www.surgimedcn.com
90% accuracy! Nature breakthrough results: blood tests can "recognize" dementia protein