While a suite of new CSF markers has entered a mature stage where they get validated with identical methods in large international cohorts, much newer blood tests are catching up fast. Scientists are pushing the limits of detection of the core AD markers in plasma, and in the process are cracking open what used to […]
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 […]
It seems blood tests for Aβ have moved off the wish list and are becoming reality—almost. Building a knowledge base for plasma measures as a proxy for brain amyloid, multiple methods applied to different research cohorts are now consistently linking low plasma Aβ42/40 to clinical, cognitive, and biomarker evidence of Alzheimer’s disease.
A lot can happen in a year. At the 2017 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London, Randall Bateman’s team at Washington University in St. Louis wowed the crowd with a blood assay for Aβ that predicted brain amyloid with previously unattainable specificity and sensitivity (Jul 2017 conference news).