For the study, published today in the journal Genome Biology, researchers compared blood samples of 48 Alzheimer’s patients and 22 controls of the same age. By looking for a certain genetic pattern, the researchers were successfully able to determine who had Alzheimer’s and who didn’t.A second larger study of 202 people found that the test could pick out other diseases, too. It was able to distinguish healthy controls from people with schizophrenia and depression with more than 95% accuracy, and was 75% accurate when it came to distinguishing people with Alzheimer’s from people with other forms of dementia. The test still needs to go through clinical trials, and it will be at least 5 years before your doctor might be able to use the test on you, says study author Andreas Keller, Ph.D., a researcher at Siemens Healthcare. But he says it’s “the first step towards an improved minimally-invasive Alzheimer’s diagnosis.” While there’s no cure, early diagnosis allows for treatments that can keep people living better, longer More from Prevention: 10 Tricks To Reboot Your Brain
