Blood Test May Identify Alzheimer's Disease, Most Common form of Dementia

Though Alzheimer's disease is the most commonly diagnosed form of dementia, a diagnosis of one hundred percent certainty is impossible until after a person has died and a brain autopsy has been performed. However, scientists continue to look for a better way to test for the debilitating symptoms of this disease as it continues to affect many in their later stages life.

According to a team of researchers from Saarland University in Germany, they may have found a way to detect the disease through a simple blood test.

Alzheimer's, a general term for memory loss and other intellectual abilities, can seriously interfere with a person's daily life. It also accounts for 50 to 80 percent of dementia cases. Statistics show that it affects an estimated 5.1 million people in the United States.

For the study, researchers focused on microRNAs-small non-coding RNA molecules that play a role in gene expression. As these traveled throughout the blood stream, researchers took blood samples from 48 Alzheimer's patients and 22 control participants. They found 140 mature microRNAs that were at different levels in the Alzheimer's patients than what were exhibited in the control group. They then chose 12 as the basis for their next test, according to Science Daily.

Twelve of the microRNAs were tested in a group of 202 participants afterwards. Besides the control group and the Alzheimer's patients, others with mild cognitive impairement, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia were also included in the study.

Results showed that the test was over 95 percent accurate in differentiating between the control patients and those with other brain disorders. When testing whether it could differentiate between Alzheimer's and other diseases, it was 75 percent accurate.

More information regarding the study can be found in the journal Genome Biology.