Novel method to Predict Alzheimer's risk before onset of symptoms

Even before symptoms occur, researchers have created a new approach to detect people who have a higher genetic risk of getting Alzheimer's disease. This method could hasten the development of new treatments.

People with Alzheimer's disease experience gradual loss of memory and other cognitive functions. While some treatments can ease symptoms, it has been challenging to develop treatments to prevent or slow disease progression. Some clinical trials investigating potential treatments may have been unsuccessful because they involved patients whose disease was too advanced to be treated. Better methods to identify people at high risk of developing Alzheimer's could aid treatment research.

To demonstrate the potential of the new method, the researchers applied it to determine the risk of Alzheimer's for each of 636 blood donors and examined whether blood levels of any of 3,000 proteins were higher or lower than normal for those identified as being high-risk. The analysis surfaced 28 proteins that could be linked to Alzheimer's risk, including several that have never been studied in Alzheimer's research. Studying these proteins could uncover new directions for drug development.

Ref:

Paranjpe MD, Chaffin M, Zahid S, Ritchie S, Rotter JI, Rich SS, et al. (2022) Neurocognitive trajectory and proteomic signature of inherited risk for Alzheimer's disease. PLoS Genet 18(9): e1010294. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1010294