“Research presented this week at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London suggests that the use of blood tests for Alzheimer’s could eventually transform the way the disease is diagnosed and even predict who might develop Alzheimer’s and when.

One study presented on Tuesday showed that, when primary care doctors had access to blood test results, their accuracy in diagnosing whether a patient’s cognitive symptoms were caused by Alzheimer’s improved considerably.

Another study, presented on Wednesday and published in the journal JAMA, suggested that the blood tests could help predict an individual’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s-related cognitive impairment over two, five and 10 years’ time.

The findings signal that these tests — which detect forms of two proteins, amyloid and tau, that are biological markers of Alzheimer’s — have growing promise to help patients be diagnosed more easily and to inform healthy people, who do not have any symptoms of cognitive impairment, of their future risk.

The goal is to transform Alzheimer’s into a disease that can be treated at its earliest stages, and to ultimately find ways to delay and even prevent its devastating memory and thinking problems.”

From New York Times.