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It has been difficult to develop tests to diagnose Alzheimer disease (AD) noninvasively and years before dementia develops. Cognitive testing is helpful but imperfect, as are recently developed imaging studies, tests of cerebrospinal fluid, and blood tests. Now, an industry-funded international team reports the development of a new and simple ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) blood test.
The researchers studied blood plasma from 85 individuals with AD and 79 nondemented controls. They assayed for 120 known signaling proteins in a “training set” comprising half of the AD and non-AD patients, and found a group of 18 proteins that distinguished AD patients from the controls. These 18 proteins were then used in a new “test set” comprisin…