Detecting Alzheimer's early tens of years before getting sick

Blood testing methods developed by Japanese and Australian scientists allow diagnosis of Alzheimer's by tens of years.

is the most common cause of dementia. It affects memory, thinking, behavior and can be fatal. To make an early diagnosis to help patients treat effectively, Japanese and Australian scientists have collaborated to develop a new blood test method based on amyloid-beta protein.

Alzheimer's affects memory, thinking, behavior and can be fatal.(Photo: JT).

In Nature, the authors say that amyloid-beta begins to accumulate in the brain about 20-30 years before Alzheimer's development should be considered as a risk factor. In the past, medicine could only test the level of accumulation of amyloid-beta through both expensive and painful invasive methods such as PET scans or cerebrospinal fluid analysis.

With the new blood test method, scientists can extract amyloid-beta-related substances from 0.5ml of blood and measure them by mass spectrometry, thereby determining the level of amyloid-beta accumulation. Tests on 232 Japanese and Australians showed that blood test results were 90% identical to those of PET scans.

After publication, the blood test method attracted mixed comments. Mr. Masami Yoshida has a wife with Alzheimer's since 2007. He currently takes care of her at home."Early diagnosis is synonymous with early treatment. The patient's family is also prepared both mentally and physically," the 73-year-old said.

Not agreeing with Mr. Yoshida, 66-year-old Morio Suzuki, Director of Japan Alzheimer's Association, said that early diagnosis is easy to push patients and their families into despair because so far science has not found a cure."It is important to build a society and system so Alzheimer's patients can live as they want," he stressed.