Recent research on Alzheimer's may help identify better drugs

Researchers have developed a blood test for patients with thinking problems and memory to check whether they have Alzheimer's and to see how far the disease has progressed.

The team after this study says that the test can help doctors decide which drugs would be more suitable for patients. For example, new drugs such as Donanaemab and lecanemab can help slow Alzheimer's progress but only among people in early stages of the disease, writes The Guardian, Periscope leads.

Prof. Oscar Hansson of the University of Lund, coauthor of the study, said: “There is an urgent need for accurate and low-cost Alzheimer's diagnosis, considering that many countries have recently approved the clinical use of amiloid therapies [such as Donaemab and lecanemeb]”.

Plates of a protein called beta amiloid and the formation of the confusion of another protein called tau in the brain are considered signs of Alzheimer's.

Writing in Nature Medicine magazine, Hansson and his colleagues reported how they found Tau fragments called the MMTRR-tau243, which could be discovered in the blood and related to the accusation of tau confusions in the brain of people with Alzheimer's, but not in other diseases.

The analysis of the team, which included 902 participants, found that the levels of this tau fragment were high among people with Alzheimer's symptoms and mild cognitive damage, and even higher levels among those with degeneration. Levels were not increased among people with cognitive injuries because of other conditions.

“Sciently, these results are very promising and important as this index was performed better than existing tests and can help track the effectiveness of new drugs in clinical trials” said Prof. Tara Spires-Jones, an expert on neurodegeneration at the University of Edinburgh, which was not included in the study.

However, she said this is not an unerring test for Alzheimer's.

This is also not a simple analysis, but requires complex scientific methods that are available only in specialised labs, so it won't be routinely used without further verification and development of cheaper and easier methods for detection”, she said.

Dr. Sheona Scales, director of research at Alzheimer's Research UK, said the MMTBR-tau243 is one of several different biomarketers being studied for use on Alzheimer's blood tests.

The thing that's interesting is that the levels of the MTBR-tau243 in the blood appear to be related to a person's memory and thinking capabilities” she said. “Exactly, it is not always possible to make a connection between the level of confusion observed through imaging and level of cognitive damage, but the blood tests they do will help monitor disease like Alzheimer's as it progresses and will help predict progress in the future”.

Another study, published in Nature Medicine, has also found that the ratio of two proteins in brain fluid is related to the degree of cognitive damage experienced by people with Alzheimer's, despite beta amiloide tile levels and tau confusion in their brain.

This study, led by scientists in the United States, included samples of 3,397 people in the U.S., Sweden and Finland and examined the levels of two proteins YWHAG and NPTX2 - which normally exist in connections, or synapses - between neurons in the brain.

The team found out that YWHAG report: NPTX2 was better in telling people about the cognitive problems than the beta amiloid levels and tau, and it could be used to predict the future cognitive decline and the beginning of the damage.

Prof. Tony Wiess-Coray, coauthor of the Stanford University study, said the results could help identify better drugs for individuals and create better clinical trials by selecting relevant participants.