A drop of dried blood obtained by a simple prick of the fingertip, like the one that diabetics usually use to measure glucose, could be used to detect key markers of Alzheimer’s disease, thus avoiding more invasive tests.
A study described in the journal Nature Medicine details a new method to detect this pathology using a drop of blood obtained from the fingertip and dried on a card.
The procedure was tested with 337 patients from seven European centers to find proteins related to Alzheimer’s and other brain changes in the cerebrospinal fluid, obtaining an accuracy of 86% in identifying alterations related to the disease.
Alzheimer’s is a neurodegenerative pathology that seriously affects memory and other mental functions, in which a progressive loss of neurons occurs as it progresses, so detecting it in time is crucial to be able to apply treatments that can delay or stop its evolution.
About 1 in 9 people over the age of 65 suffer from this disease, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.
Current diagnostic tests, such as cerebrospinal fluid analysis or brain imaging techniques (such as CT or PET), tend to be invasive, expensive or poorly accessible and, in addition, detect the disease when it is already quite advanced.
Therefore, one of the challenges of current research is to advance blood analysis as an early diagnosis method.
However, one of the practical limitations of these blood tests is the way the samples are handled and stored and the availability of qualified personnel to collect them.
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To address this challenge, the present study – with the participation of the Spanish Carlos III Health Institute and the ACE Alzheimer’s Research Center in Barcelona – focuses on analyzing biomarkers from blood drops obtained from the fingertip and dried on a card.
This is a test that the patients themselves can do without the need for external help, as occurred in this work.
The authors found that p-tau217 protein levels in fingerstick samples largely matched the results of standard blood tests and identified Alzheimer’s-related changes in cerebrospinal fluid with an accuracy of 86%.
Two other biomarkers associated with the disease, GFAP and NFL, were also successfully measured, showing high agreement with traditional diagnostic tests.
GFAP (glial fibrillary acidic protein) is a key biomarker in Alzheimer’s, since it indicates the activation of brain support cells associated with the accumulation of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, which allows the disease to be detected early.
NFL (Light Neurofilament) is another protein that is released when neurons are damaged, becoming an important biomarker of neurodegeneration.
The researchers warn that this diagnostic procedure is not yet ready for clinical use and that further work is needed.
However, the results suggest that this simple technique could make large-scale diagnoses possible, including people without resources.
With information from EFE
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