Researchers have created a simple blood test that can detect Alzheimer’s disease.
The blood test accurately measures one of the proteins—P-tau181—implicated in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), according to a new study.
Blood P-tau181 indirectly measures tau hyperphosphorylation in the brain, which is one of the hallmarks of the disease along with the clumpy plaques caused by the protein amyloid β.
Prior to this discovery, detecting the proteins and confirming an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis was possible only through expensive PET scans, invasive lumbar punctures, or autopsy.
The search for an Alzheimer’s disease blood test has been years in the making, but a test sensitive enough to detect tau long eluded researchers.
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