A groundbreaking blood test developed by researchers at Washington University and Lund University offers unprecedented insights into Alzheimer's disease progression. The test measures MTBR-tau243 protein levels with 92% accuracy, helping doctors distinguish between early and late-stage disease. This innovative diagnostic tool can potentially guide treatment decisions and provide clearer understanding of cognitive decline. The research, published in Nature Medicine, represents a significant advancement in neurodegenerative disease detection and management.
April 01, 2025
New highly accurate blood test to measure progress of Alzheimer's
"This
blood test clearly identifies Alzheimer's tau tangles" - Randall J.
Bateman, Washington University Neurologist
New
highly accurate blood test to measure progress of Alzheimer's
US
researchers have developed a new blood test that not only aids in the diagnosis
of Alzheimer’s disease but also indicates how far it has progressed.
Key
Points
1 Innovative
blood test measures MTBR-tau243 protein levels
2 Accurately
distinguishes Alzheimer's disease stages
3 Provides
insights for targeted treatment
4 Non-invasive
diagnostic breakthrough
While
currently available blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease can diagnose the
disease, they do not indicate the clinical stage of the disease symptoms – that
is, the degree of impairment in thinking or memory due to Alzheimer’s dementia.
The new
test can help doctors determine which patients are likely to benefit from drug
treatment and to what extent. It can also provide insight on whether a person’s
symptoms are likely due to Alzheimer’s versus some other cause, said the
researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, US and
Lund University in Sweden.
In the
study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, the researchers found that
levels of a protein called MTBR-tau243 in the blood accurately reflect the
amount of toxic accumulation of tau aggregates in the brain and correlate with
the severity of Alzheimer’s disease.
Analysing
blood levels of MTBR-tau243 from a group of people with cognitive decline, the
researchers were able to distinguish between people with early- or later-stage
Alzheimer’s disease and separate both groups of patients from people whose
symptoms were caused by something other than Alzheimer’s.
“This
blood test clearly identifies Alzheimer’s tau tangles, which is our best
biomarker measure of Alzheimer’s symptoms and dementia,” said co-senior author
Randall J. Bateman, Professor of Neurology at Washington University.
“In
clinical practice right now, we don’t have easy or accessible measures of
Alzheimer’s tangles and dementia, and so a tangle blood test like this can
provide a much better indication if the symptoms are due to Alzheimer’s and may
also help doctors decide which treatments are best for their patients,” he
added.
The
researchers developed a technique to measure MTBR-tau243 levels in people’s
blood and compared it to the amount of tau tangles in their brains as measured
by brain scans.
They
piloted the approach on data from two cohorts: 108 people from the US, and a
subset of 55 people from Sweden. To assess whether the approach was
generalisable, they validated it in an independent dataset consisting of the
remaining 739 people in Sweden.
The
researchers’ analysis showed that blood MTBR-tau243 levels reflected the amount
of tau tangles in the brain with 92 per cent accuracy.
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