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A blood test for Alzheimer's disease?

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 15, page 280 (2014)Cite this article

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A study published in Nature Medicine has identified a potential blood-based biomarker for Alzheimer's disease. Specifically, the level of a set of 10 lipids predicted, with an accuracy of over 90%, whether or not an older individual would develop mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease within 2–3 years.

“These findings are potentially very exciting,” says Simon Lovestone, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, UK ( Nature News , 9 Mar 2014). Simon Ridley of the charity Alzheimer's Research UK notes that “detecting the disease at this pre-symptomatic stage has so far proved difficult” and that “a blood test to identify people at risk of Alzheimer's would be a real step forward for research” ( Guardian , 9 Mar 2014). In addition, “the preclinical state of the disease offers a window of opportunity for timely disease-modifying intervention”, says study author Howard Federoff ( Guardian , 9 Mar 2014).

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Change history

  • 20 March 2014

    The second sentence of the original version of this In the news article could be interpreted in several ways. The sentence has now been corrected to remove any ambiguity.

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  1. Leonie Welberg
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Welberg, L. A blood test for Alzheimer's disease?. Nat Rev Neurosci 15, 280 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3726

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