A commercially available blood test did a better job of detecting Alzheimer’s disease than primary care doctors or specialists using traditional tools, according to findings from a large study.
Patients being evaluated for cognitive problems were tested with C2N Diagnostics’ PrecivityAD2 blood test, which looks for fragments of amyloid beta and tau proteins known to be associated with plaques in the brain that are characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease.
Among 698 patients seen at memory clinics, the C2N test was 91% accurate at identifying Alzheimer’s disease, while specialists using clinical exams, cognitive testing, and computed tomographic scans were 73% accurate, researchers reported at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Philadelphia on Sunday.
Among 515 patients seen in primary care, the C2N test was also 91% accurate, while primary care physicians were 63% accurate.
“These results were especially impressive considering that older populations in primary care often have medical conditions that can influence or vary the concentrations of p-tau217,” study leader Dr. Sebastian Palmqvist of Lund University in Sweden said in a statement, referring to one of the Alzheimer’s-related proteins.
The average age in the study, which was also published in JAMA, was roughly 74 years.
Presently, no single test can distinguish Alzheimer’s disease from other forms of dementia. Workups can be expensive, invasive and not always accessible, the researchers said.
“This study makes the case convincingly that highly sensitive blood measures of Alzheimer disease can be integrated into the clinical decision-making process, including in the primary care setting,” a JAMA editorial notes.
“Accurate and early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is increasingly important because of the new era of monoclonal antibodies targeting amyloid reduction in the brain,” it said.
There are now two U.S. approved treatments for early Alzheimer’s.
A separate study presented at the meeting on Monday compared the accuracy of six commercial blood tests for detecting Alzheimer’s disease.
“The top two performers across all measures” were C2N Diagnostics’ PrecivityAD2 and Lumipulse from Belgium’s Fujirebio, the authors of that study said in a press release.
Read more news from the Alzheimer’s meeting on Reuters.com
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