A team of researchers from Australia and Japan has developed the world’s first blood test accurate enough to detect Alzheimer’s disease up to 20 years before symptoms begin. The Alzheimer’s blood test could be a serious breakthrough for the millions of Americans who will later face this progressive disease.
A mere drop of blood is enough for this test to identify one of the first signs of Alzheimer’s disease, the build-up of a sticky protein called amyloid-beta. Amyloid plaques, typically found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, are small clumps of this protein that block synaptic signaling from one brain cell to another.
