"One challenge in developing a treatment for Alzheimer’s lies in that by the time symptoms occur, brain neurons have already been damaged, perhaps beyond repair. And once neural connections are compromised, they aren’t likely to reform or rebuild. Drug treatments that start after people report declines in their thinking skills may simply be too little too late.
That’s why there’s strong interest in developing a reliable way to identify Alzheimer’s patients as early as possible, years or even decades before their memories start to fade. Researchers are investigating a number of promising markers that appear in the blood that could be useful in tracking Alzheimer’s.
Some of the most encouraging of this work centers on amyloid, the protein that is the hallmark of the disease. Current methods of testing for amyloid, including taking samples of cerebrospinal fluid and PET imaging of the brain, are expensive, time consuming and, in the case of the spinal fluid samples, invasive. That limits the number of people who get tested; having a blood test would potentially allow more people at risk of developing Alzheimer’s to learn of their status."
