Technology for early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s with a blood test has been developed. It is an achievement achieved in the process of tracing the cause of Alzheimer’s disease, which was covered by a veil.
A research team at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the United States has published a study showing that blood tests can be used to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, which causes dementia, early. Abnormal activation of astrocytes, star-shaped brain cells, leads to Alzheimer’s disease, which can be identified by measuring blood concentrations. The study was published in the medical journal Nature Medicine on the 29th (local time).
The research team tested the blood of more than 1,000 elderly people whose cognitive ability was not impaired and followed the progress. As a result, it was confirmed that people with abnormal amyloid protein abnormalities in the brain with indicators of abnormal astrocyte activity in the blood would develop Alzheimer’s in the future.
Previous studies have explained that the cause of Alzheimer’s is that the beta-amyloid protein on the surface of the brain and the tau protein in nerve cells get stuck and turn into toxic proteins. Alzheimer’s therapies have also focused on slowing or blocking these mechanisms. However, as a person who does not suffer from Alzheimer’s disease has even been found to have amyloid protein build up in the brain, it has been speculated that there may be another cause for the disease.
Astrocytes, which have been identified as a new cause of Alzheimer’s, are a type of ‘glia cells’ that supply nutrients and oxygen to nerve cells involved in information processing and ward off pathogens. Until now, the field of brain research has focused more on the role of nerve cells, but recent research has shown that glia cells that help nerve cells are directly involved in brain diseases. The research team said, “Astrosite regulates the relationship between amyloid and tau protein in the brain like an orchestra conductor.”
