The study: Dr Emer McGrath, associate professor at Galway College of Medicine and Nursing and his team measured blood levels of
P-tau181, a marker of neurodegeneration,
in 52 cognitively healthy adults who were also participants in the Framingham Heart Study. The participants all had a specialized PET brain scan. The blood samples were taken from people who had no cognitive symptoms at the time of the blood test. The analysis reveals that:
- elevated levels of P-tau181 in the blood appear associated, on brain scans, with a greater accumulation of ß-amyloid, characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease – over a follow-up of 7 years;
- biomarker P-tau181 outperforms 2 other biomarkers in predicting ß-amyloid aggregates on brain scans;
First results considered very promising because P-tau181 seems to be able to detect people at high risk of dementia, and this at a very early stage of the disease, even before memory problems or behavioral changes develop, explain the researchers.
Researchers are already studying the advisability of screening the general population, as a simple blood test would suffice. The implications also apply to clinical trials of new drugs, as blood levels of P-tau181 could be used to identify participants still at a very early stage of the disease, when there is still a possibility of preventing disease progression.