A commercially available blood test has shown high levels of accuracy in detecting Alzheimer’s, even in its early stages, boosting the prospects of early diagnosis for sufferers of the neurodegenerative disease.
Alzheimer’s, a type of dementia, is currently diagnosed through invasive and expensive tests such as a lumbar puncture to release spinal fluid or through a tomographic scan. Patients can face long waits for these procedures.
But according to a peer-reviewed study by Sweden’s Gothenburg university, a blood test known as the p-tau217 immunoassay yielded “high accuracy” in identifying tau