Blood Test Could Identify Alzheimer’s
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
A blood test may be able to identify Alzheimer’s disease long before there are symptoms of the brain-destroying disorder, allowing early treatment, according to researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers reported in the March 22 Science that injecting an antibody into mice causes a sudden flood in the bloodstream of a protein that forms neuron-destroying plaques in the brain.
The level of the protein, amyloid-beta, after the injection was an indication of the amount of plaque, said Dr. David M. Holtzman. He emphasized that although the technique works in a strain of mice that develop Alzheimer’s, it is still not known if the test would work in humans.
