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

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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