Alison Abbott in Nature:
Like many Alzheimer’s researchers, neurologist Randall Bateman is not prone to effusiveness, having endured disappointments in his field. But he and others have found one big reason to be excited lately. In just a few years, he predicts, there will be a simple blood test for your risk of Alzheimer’s. “Any family doctor will be able to do it.” Bateman, who is at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, has been running clinical trials related to Alzheimer’s disease for nearly 20 years. “From all I’ve seen, this is a very likely scenario,” he says. “It’ll be just like going to get your blood cholesterol checked and then being given statins if levels are too high.”
This extraordinary turnaround in outlook for the disease that affects more than 55 million people worldwide comes down to two things — both of which were thought by many to be nigh on impossible just a decade ago. First, drugs that can slow the disease, if it is caught early enough, are now coming on the market. And second, scientists have developed relatively cheap and highly accurate blood-based biomarkers for Alzheimer’s.
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