Are Aβ Blood Tests Ready for Prime Time?

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In the short space of two years, the erstwhile fantasy of a blood test for Alzheimer’s disease has become reality. Or so it seems. At the 2017 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London, Randall Bateman, Washington University, St. Louis, had wowed the audience by showing how an exquisitely sensitive mass spectroscopy assay of plasma detected a teeny drop in the Aβ42/40 ratio that correlated with positive PET scans for brain amyloid (Jul 2017 conference news).