A new blood test detects the progression of mild cognitive impairment leading to Alzheimer's
This new test measures new biomarkers and combines them with clinical data to accurately predict which patients with mild cognitive impairment will progress toward Alzheimer's and which will remain stable.
A new blood test validated for clinical practice at L'Hospitalet de Llobregat Bellvitge Hospital allows us to anticipate whether a patient with mild cognitive impairment will evolve into Alzheimer's disease.
The results of the study, published in the journal iScience (Cell Press), have made it possible to develop and validate the MAP-AD test in hospital practice, created by the company ADmit Therapeutics (a company derived from the Bellvitge research centre, IDIBELL).
Bellvitge Hospital has reported that the test has obtained the CE-IVDR mark, which ensures that it meets the safety and efficacy requirements of the European Union, which opens the door to clinical application.
Over the past few years, teams of researchers around the world have worked on different biomarkers, which are molecules that can be detected in the blood and indicate that the patient has a disease or is at greater risk of developing it.
Most of these recently developed blood biomarkers serve to confirm the presence of brain pathology , such as the accumulation of amyloid protein in the brain, which is a biological feature of people who have Alzheimer's or may have it in the future.
There may be a time difference of 15 years between the presence of markers of the disease in the brain and the appearance of the first symptoms.
The distinctive element of this new test is that it measures new biomarkers (relating to mitochondrial DNA methylation) and combines them with clinical data to accurately predict which patients with mild cognitive impairment will move toward Alzheimer's dementia and which patients will remain stable.
The study's coordinator, Jordi Gascón, head of the Memory Unit of the Neurology Service at Bellvitge Hospital, has stressed that researchers "have been able to identify underlying pathology in recent years, but it was very difficult to predict clinical evolution."
"Having a reliable tool to anticipate the disease is a turning point: it allows us to have more informed conversations with families and better guide interventions, preventive, in clinical trials or with emerging new therapies, "he said.
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