Blood test predicts AD pathology up to 10 years before symptoms

A new blood test may be able to detect Alzheimer’s disease-related pathology up to 10 years before symptoms appear, according to a press release from Durin Technologies.

“Our test correctly identified nearly 97% of participants who were diagnosed as cognitively normal at the time their samples were taken, but who progressed, within an average of 48 months, to either the mild cognitive impairment stage or more advanced Alzheimer’s disease,” Cassandra DeMarshall, PhD, Durin Technologies director, said in a press release. “To our knowledge, this is the first blood test to accurately detect Alzheimer’s-related pathology several years before either clinical symptoms or more expensive and invasive tests can identify the disease.”

The minimally invasive test was developed through a collaboration between researchers at Durin Technologies, a biotechnology company, and Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine (SOM) in Stratford, New Jersey. Researchers evaluated 328 blood samples, with 106 samples from participants without dementia for comparison. Samples were analyzed for eight autoantibody biomarkers, according to the release.

“An accurate, noninvasive blood test for early detection and monitoring of AD could bend the curve of clinical outcomes through earlier participation in clinical trials and monitoring of AD progression of patients under treatment,” Robert Nagele, PhD, Durin’s founder and chief scientific officer and professor of geriatrics and gerontology at Rowan-Virtua SOM, said in the release.