Blood tests—they’re not events we usually look forward to, but we’ve also come to know them as part of our routine health check-ups. After all, our blood can say a lot about us. They’re a simple and cost-effective way to detect and prevent health problems, a ‘health blueprint’ of sorts that maps out everything from low iron levels to high blood glucose levels, and everything in between.
Now, as highlighted in a recent article in Nature- International Journal of Science, scientists in Japan and Australia have uncovered an additional use for blood tests—identifying an individual’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
By measuring the level of amyloid-β proteins in an individual’s brain, a blood test can now be used to indicate whether someone is at risk for developing Alzheimer’s. Though these protein levels can also be detected through brain imaging and analyzing cerebrospinal fluid, these techniques are both more expensive and uncomfortable than a blood test.
But does merely identifying people’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, actually help in treating the condition? The answer is yes. Clinical trials for drugs to treat Alzheimer’s have a high failure rate that many suggest is due to the fact that trial candidates have often been those in the later stages of the condition, since early identification of Alzheimer’s has been so difficult.
So perhaps we need to look at blood tests, beyond the short-term discomfort of the syringe, as a valuable tool in our fight against a whole host of diseases and illnesses which now amazingly includes Alzheimer’s disease.
