Alzheimer’s treatments showing early promise

FASTER WAYS TO DIAGNOSE ALZHEIMER'S ARE COMING Right now, most researchers diagnose Alzheimer's with a PET (positron emission tomography) scan, to measure amounts of amyloid

deposits in the brain, or a spinal tap, to gauge amyloid levels in the fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord. But the procedures are expensive (making insurance coverage an issue),

time-consuming and, with the spinal tap, potentially painful. That's one reason researchers are on the hunt for a better, cheaper and faster blood test. Arman Fesharaki-Zadeh, M.D., a

behavioral neurologist and neuropsychiatrist at Yale Medicine, says that his and others’ blood-test research involves hunting for “abnormal versions of tau proteins,” which would also help

in diagnosing the disease at earlier stages. “By the time many folks come to see me, they've progressed so far they can no longer qualify for clinical treatment trials, which is

heartbreaking.” But it can also be challenging to measure these sorts of biomarkers in blood, as they exist in very small concentrations, Schneider says. That's why researchers have

turned to ultrasensitive tests, known as assays, to see if they can pick up minuscule amounts of biomarkers like amyloid and tau. A 2019 study in _JAMA Neurology_ found that one such test,

an immunoassay by Elecsys, was indeed able to pick up these markers in all stages of Alzheimer's disease. “The thought is eventually it could become a diagnostic screening tool, like

other lab tests we do for other illnesses,” Schneider notes.