An international group of scientists from the Washington University School of Medicine and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Germany, have developed a new simple blood test that can predict the risk of having Alzheimer's 16 years before the emergence of symptoms.
The group announced their new development in the Nature Medicine journal on Monday. The new blood test detects a type of protein known as "Neurofilament light polypeptide (NLP)" that normally resides inside neurons, and makes part of their internal skeleton.
When neurons expire, the protein leaks into surrounding cerebrospinal fluid, submerging the brain and spine, and then travel into the bloodstream.
Previous studies have found that detecting high levels of NLP in a person's cerebrospinal fluid indicate that some of his brain cells have been damaged and he is at risk of Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases. However, obtaining this fluid for diagnosis requires the so-called "spinal tap," or "lumbar puncture," a process in which spinal fluid is removed from the spinal canal for diagnostic testing.
The new study found that levels of this protein rise in people exposed to the disease, 16 years before the emergence of symptoms, Mathias Jucker, professor of cell biology of neurological diseases at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases told Asharq Al-Awsat.
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