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Blood test boosts Alzheimer's diagnosis accuracy to 94.5%, clinical study shows

medicalxpress.com

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Re: Blood test boosts Alzheimer's diagnosis accuracy to 94.5%, clinical study shows

#41

Post by rowanG077 »

ulfw wrote: post #38
Baeocystin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know two people who have been taking the new monoclonal antibody treatment for it. One who was a bit further along when she started, and did not show any significant improvement. The one who started while she was still in the early stages has completely arrested her descent. She hasn't recovered much of what she already lost, but she's still able to live independently and enjoy life, and her mental acuity scores ar…

How do you know it's completely arrested? Best these type of drugs can do is give you a few months extra window (say 4-6 months). They're not a cure. Sadly.

They tell you this:

> her mental acuity scores are (slightly) better than they were last year

Re: Blood test boosts Alzheimer's diagnosis accuracy to 94.5%, clinical study shows

#42

Post by Baeocystin »

ulfw wrote: post #38
Baeocystin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know two people who have been taking the new monoclonal antibody treatment for it. One who was a bit further along when she started, and did not show any significant improvement. The one who started while she was still in the early stages has completely arrested her descent. She hasn't recovered much of what she already lost, but she's still able to live independently and enjoy life, and her mental acuity scores ar…

How do you know it's completely arrested? Best these type of drugs can do is give you a few months extra window (say 4-6 months). They're not a cure. Sadly.

Completely arrested? I don't. But it appears to be arrested in ways that matter for mental acuity, for now. I've taken care of a parent with Alzheimer's, and helped several other caregivers over the years with their own family's journeys, and one thing I can tell you is that I have never, ever seen an actual halting of the progression for this long. The descent is usually a stairstep pattern, but the steps are on the matter of weeks to a month or two. My friend has been stable for a year.

This is all new. There is research hinting at Alzheimer's subtypes, some of which are more likely to respond than others. Even halting the decline is a huge potential breakthrough.

Re: Blood test boosts Alzheimer's diagnosis accuracy to 94.5%, clinical study shows

#43

Post by WA »

bradley13 wrote: post #39

Maybe I've misunderstood something, but how can they know the accuracy of the test? It is the best test out there, so if it misses a diagnosis, how do they reliably catch the false negative?

Person has Alzheimer‘s (diagnosed by neurological assessment). Test this person with a blood test.

Re: Blood test boosts Alzheimer's diagnosis accuracy to 94.5%, clinical study shows

#44

Post by DavidSJ »

bradley13 wrote: post #39

Maybe I've misunderstood something, but how can they know the accuracy of the test? It is the best test out there, so if it misses a diagnosis, how do they reliably catch the false negative?

It’s one of the best blood tests. There are also PET scans, lumbar punctures (spinal taps), and postmortem analyses of brain tissue.

Re: Blood test boosts Alzheimer's diagnosis accuracy to 94.5%, clinical study shows

#45

Post by MarcelOlsz »

bradley13 wrote: post #39

Maybe I've misunderstood something, but how can they know the accuracy of the test? It is the best test out there, so if it misses a diagnosis, how do they reliably catch the false negative?

If the patient forgets to follow-up. Badum tss. Thanks for the layup.

Re: Blood test boosts Alzheimer's diagnosis accuracy to 94.5%, clinical study shows

#47

Post by ulfw »

Baeocystin wrote: post #42
ulfw wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know it's completely arrested? Best these type of drugs can do is give you a few months extra window (say 4-6 months). They're not a cure. Sadly.

Completely arrested? I don't. But it appears to be arrested in ways that matter for mental acuity, for now. I've taken care of a parent with Alzheimer's, and helped several other caregivers over the years with their own family's journeys, and one thing I can tell you is that I have never, ever seen an actual halting of the progression for this long. The descent is usually a stairstep pattern, but the steps are on the…

I hope there'll be a cure or something that lasts long. It's a horrible disease. Best of luck!

Re: Blood test boosts Alzheimer's diagnosis accuracy to 94.5%, clinical study shows

#48

Post by probably_wrong »

tptacek wrote: post #5
janalsncm wrote: post #4

For a disease which (to my knowledge) can’t be slowed down or reversed, I think it’s a fair question why we would want to detect Alzheimer’s. Maybe there are other reasons, but my suspicion is that we will be able to, and an easy detection method significantly widens the pool of subjects to study later on. If it turns out that driving a Prius on Tuesdays slows down Alzheimer’s, a larger pool of subjects would allow u…

The accuracy of this test is nowhere nearly good enough to do population-wide screening. The clinical setting for this test is memory clinics in which Alzheimers is already relatively highly likely differentially, and even there you're going to get a surprising number of false positives. (There's enough info in the supplemental link on this page to have an LLM do the Bayes math for you.)

Off-topic: I only came to this thread because I thought "I bet some comment will manage to somehow include LLMs in the discussion".

Looks like my prior was not too bad :)

Re: Blood test boosts Alzheimer's diagnosis accuracy to 94.5%, clinical study shows

#50

Post by peter_retief »

janalsncm wrote: post #4

For a disease which (to my knowledge) can’t be slowed down or reversed, I think it’s a fair question why we would want to detect Alzheimer’s. Maybe there are other reasons, but my suspicion is that we will be able to, and an easy detection method significantly widens the pool of subjects to study later on. If it turns out that driving a Prius on Tuesdays slows down Alzheimer’s, a larger pool of subjects would allow u…

This disease is in my family, honestly not sure I would want to know if I will get it.
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