New Blood Test Establishes Early-Stage Alzheimer’s with 90% Accuracy

New Blood Test Establishes Early-Stage Alzheimer’s with 90% Accuracy
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A new blood test has been developed that can identify the biological markers of early-stage Alzheimer’s disease with approximately 90% accuracy, offering a faster and simpler diagnostic tool for clinicians, Earth.com revealed. The test, which looks for abnormal amyloid and tau proteins in the blood, aims to help doctors more efficiently determine the next steps in a patient’s care.

This new diagnostic method provides a significant advantage over traditional, more invasive, and expensive procedures like PET scans and spinal taps. According to the article, in a study involving over a thousand people in Sweden, primary care doctors’ accuracy in diagnosing Alzheimer’s was only 61%, while specialists were correct 73% of the time using standard evaluations. By adding the blood test information, the decisions made by these clinicians became more precise.

The test, which is already available in the U.S. and expected to be adopted in other countries soon, is intended to be a first-line tool for people with genuine memory concerns. It can help busy primary care clinics triage patients more effectively, referring those with a high-probability score to a specialist for confirmatory testing and appropriate treatment, while potentially sparing others from unnecessary procedures. The test does not replace PET scans or spinal fluid analysis but helps to focus the use of those tools where they will be most beneficial.