Researchers Have Identified A Blood Biomarker That May Indicate Alzheimer’s Disease Ten Years Before Symptom Onset, Another Recent Win In The Fight For Early Diagnosis And Intervention

Katharina Buczek |

Jan 19, 2023

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Approximately 6.5 million American adults ages sixty-five and older are currently living with Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Although the progressive neurologic disorder actually begins decades before patients experience any symptom onset– such as difficulty completing tasks, challenges in problem-solving or planning, and memory loss.

Countless research efforts have thus been launched in order to increase the likelihood of early AD diagnosis– since this provides physicians with a greater opportunity to slow down the disease’s progression in patients through the use of drugs and therapies.

And just last week, a new study conducted by Karolinska Institutet in Sweden may have pushed us one step closer to that goal.

The researchers focused on an inherited form of the disease and found that a protein– known as glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP)– is a potential biomarker for extremely early stages of AD.

“Our results suggest that GFAP, a presumed biomarker for activated immune cells in the brain, reflects changes in the brain due to Alzheimer’s disease that occurs before the accumulation of tau protein and measurable neuronal damage,” explained Charlotte Johansson, the study’s first author.

With AD, nerve cells located in the brain will degenerate due to the abnormal accumulation of two proteins– tau and beta-amyloid.

Then, as greater amounts of brain neurons suffer damage, cognitive functions will be impacted– resulting in the dysfunction of speech and memory.

AD progresses gradually, and these biological changes within the brain begin twenty to twenty-five years before memory loss, and various other cognitive symptoms are observed.

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So, the sooner that a patient is accurately diagnosed, the sooner they can receive appropriate treatments– which is why so many scientists are currently searching for both easy-to-use and precise early diagnosis methods.

The researchers from Karolinska Institutet also joined this global effort. They have analyzed blood biomarkers for extremely early pathological changes occurring in an inherited form of AD. This inherited form is rare, accounting for less than one percent of all cases; meanwhile, individuals who have a parent with AD caused by a mutation have a fifty percent risk of developing the neurologic disorder themselves.

The team studied one hundred and sixty-four blood plasma samples collected from thirty-three mutation carriers, as well as forty-two relatives who did not inherit the pathogenic predisposition. This data was collected from 1994 to 2018.

Then, results revealed distinct changes in the concentrations of various blood proteins among mutation carriers. The first change the researchers observed was an increase in GFAP– which occurred about ten years before the onset of AD symptoms.

“This was followed by increased concentrations of P-tau181 and later, neurofilament light protein (NfL), which we already know is directly associated with the extent of neuronal damage in the Alzheimer’s brain,” said Caroline Graff, the study’s final author.

So, moving forward, the researchers are now hopeful that the GFAP discovery could serve as an early intervention target.

“In the future, it could be used as a non-invasive biomarker for the early activation of immune cells such as astrocytes in the central nervous system, which can be valuable to the development of new drugs and to the diagnostics of cognitive diseases,” Johansson said.

To read the study’s complete findings, which have since been published in Oxford Academic, visit the link here.

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By Katharina Buczek

Katharina Buczek graduated from Stony Brook University with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Digital Arts. Specializing ... More about Katharina Buczek