An international research project is testing whether a finger prick-style blood test could be used to help diagnose Alzheimer's disease. The trial is looking at three proteins in the blood that are associated with Alzheimer's and comparing this with the current gold standard approach to diagnosing the disease that uses expensive brain scans and invasive procedures which can be inaccessible for many.
The finger prick test uses a simple plasma separation card which makes testing a lot cheaper and easier to carry out. It does not need to be refrigerated and can be stored and shipped to a laboratory for analysis at ambient temperature.
If successful, the test could offer a scalable, accessible and cost-effective way to screen for the disease which could enable earlier intervention, with a better chance of delaying the progress of Alzheimer's or the development of symptoms.
The finger prick test will be run as a part of the Global Alzheimer's Platform Foundation (GAP)'s Bio-Hermes-002 study, which is aimed at advancing Alzheimer's disease diagnosis using blood and digital biomarkers. GAP is working in partnership with the not-for-profit medical research organisation, LifeArc, and UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) with its Biomarker Factory.
To date, GAP has enrolled 883 of the 1000 participants from 25 sites across the UK, USA and Canada. This includes a mix of cognitively normal people, those with mild cognitive impairment and some with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. Out of this group, over 360 have completed the test.
Researchers will analyze each sample for proteins in the blood, also known as blood-based biomarkers of the disease – phosphorylated tau 217(pTau217), Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and Neurofilament light polypeptide (NfL) – and compare the results with a variety of other tests being developed for Alzheimer's disease based on blood-based and digital biomarkers (such as speech tests, retinal scans, cognitive tests) as well as the gold standard PET scans and MRI scans.
