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Will we know years in advance whether we will develop dementia later? British and Chinese scientists have identified at least eleven proteins in our blood that can predict dementia very accurately.
Bron: The Independent, The Guardian, The TelegraphGisteren om 20:20
A breakthrough, that is what the researchers from the University of Warwick and Fudan University in Shanghai call their discovery. The eleven proteins they identified were found in blood plasma, the liquid component of our blood, without blood cells or platelets. The proteins are so-called biomarkers or indicators for the biological changes that dementia or Alzheimer’s patients undergo. According to the study, which appeared in the scientific journal Nature, the presence of the proteins points to dementia in nine out of ten cases.
The scientists analyzed blood samples from more than 50,000 healthy Britons collected between 2006 and 2010. More than 1,400 of them developed dementia in the 10 to 15 years that followed. By analyzing the proteins in their blood and using artificial intelligence, the researchers discovered that the eleven proteins can predict dementia up to fifteen years before diagnosis.
And having that information so early is extremely useful because it gives patients the opportunity to start medications at a very early stage that slow the progression of the disease, which also improves the effectiveness of those medications.
“It’s still very early days and we still have a lot of work to do, but this could lay the foundation for the early prediction of dementia and teach us more about how to diagnose it early and accurately,” said Richard Oakley of the British Alzheimer’s Society to The Independent.
More than 55 million people worldwide live with dementia. That figure is expected to rise to 78 million by 2030. About 70 percent of all dementia is caused by Alzheimer’s disease.