Blood test takes step toward predicting Alzheimer's risk, Stanford resear...(d Britschgi who is also a first author o...),Health

Reaching out to clinics in the United States, as well as Sweden, Poland and Italy, Britschgi obtained a total of 259 archived blood samples from individuals who had symptoms ranging from nothing abnormal to mild cognitive impairment to advanced Alzheimer's. Starting with 120 communication proteins, the team developed an analysis procedure to recognize if there was a pattern seen in Alzheimer's that could be compared with that of people without the condition. They discovered that as few as 18 proteins were sufficient to identify an Alzheimer's-specific pattern.

Among blood samples from 92 individuals who ranged from no symptoms to full dementia, the protein analysis matched the clinical diagnosis 90 percent of the time.

They then asked if they could predict the development of Alzheimer's among 47 people with mild cognitive impairment who had been followed from two to six years. The test - done on blood samples taken several years earlier - flagged 91 percent of the patients who developed Alzheimer's by the end of the follow-up time, as diagnosed by conventional methods.

"Already we have people approaching us at meetings asking if they can give us a vial of their grandfather's blood for testing," said Britschgi. Their findings show that it is possible to use factors in the blood to diagnose and even predict the disease, but, the authors emphasized, it must now be confirmed in other labs.

According to Satoris Inc, the company will develop a commercial Alzheimer's blood test, initially for use in research labs and, if confirmed as reliable, eventually as a clinical diagnostic test upon regulatory approval.

Britschgi and Wyss-Coray are interested in finding out why the cell communication pathways are altered in Alzheimer's. In their study, they determined that the 18 proteins that indicate
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