Blood tests could bring new hope to Alzheimer’s clinical trials

A team of scientists at UCL have found that blood tests measuring the hallmark Alzheimer's protein, beta-amyloid (amyloid), could radically reduce the cost of clinical trials and potentially open the door to treating the disease earlier. The findings, published in the journal Brain , suggest that blood tests could be used to recruit people to Alzheimer's drug trials before they start showing any symptoms. Lead author Professor Jonathan Schott (Dementia Research Centre, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology) said: "Current evidence suggests that the brain changes leading to Alzheimer's disease start many years before symptoms. Identifying individuals at risk opens a window of opportunity to offer treatments to prevent the onset of cognitive decline. "Our results - from a sample of individuals from across mainland Britain who were all born in the same week in 1946 - show that blood tests may be a useful means of identifying individuals who are in the earliest stages of the disease. "In the short term, this has implications for clinical trials of new treatments for Alzheimer's disease. Blood tests could allow for rapid screening, and reduction of the numbers who would need more expensive PET scans before entering a study.