Blood Test Could Be Used To Screen For Alzheimer’s Even Before Symptoms, Study Suggests

CNN (1/22, Howard) reports, “Testing a person’s blood for a type of protein called phosphorylated tau, or p-tau, could be used to screen for Alzheimer’s disease with ‘high accuracy,’ even before symptoms begin to show, a new study suggests.” The research “involved testing blood for a key biomarker of Alzheimer’s called p-tau217, which increases at the same time as other damaging proteins — beta amyloid and tau — build up in the brains of people with the disease.” The “simple blood test was found to be up to 96% accurate in identifying elevated levels of beta amyloid and up to 97% accurate in identifying tau.” The findings were published in JAMA Neurology.