Biomarkers in blood serum could classify individuals with Alzheimer’s

WASHINGTON - Biomarkers in blood serum can be combined with clinical information to accurately classify patients with Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new research.

Identifying biomarkers in the blood has several advantages over other methods of classifying patients with Alzheimer’s disease, including detecting biomarkers in the cerebrospinal fluid and neuroimaging.

Blood can be collected at any clinic or in-home visit and most patients will agree to the process, whereas not all facilities can conduct lumbar punctures to obtain cerebrospinal fluid.

Sid E. O’Bryant of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and colleagues analysed proteins in the serum of 197 patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and 203 controls without Alzheimer’s disease.

The final biomarker risk score correctly identified 80 percent of the individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and accurately excluded 91 percent of the individuals without Alzheimer’s disease.

When other factors were also considered-age, sex, education and whether an individual had the APOE gene, which is associated with risk for Alzheimer’s disease-the score correctly identified 94 percent of the individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and accurately classified 84 percent of participants who did not have the disease.

“In addition to offering more accessible, rapid and cost- and time-effective methods for assessment, biomarkers also hold great potential for the identification of endophenotypes within Alzheimer’s disease populations that are associated with particular disease mechanisms,” the authors wrote.

The study appeared in Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. (ANI)