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The only truly reliable test for Alzheimer’s is to put slices of your brain under a microscope. By then, you’re dead.
Now researchers at Johns Hopkins University have identified 38 proteins that signal dementia years in advance of any symptoms if their levels are elevated in the blood.
Before this study, these proteins had not been thought to be related to dementia.
In particular, elevated levels of 16 of the proteins seem to predict Alzheimer’s disease or dementia as much as 20 years before symptoms appear.
Excess amounts of one protein, called SVEP1, in the blood appears to actually cause the disease, the scientists theorize.
SVEP1’s role in the body isn’t clear but it has been linked to hardening of the arteries.
The research used banked blood samples taken from 2011 into 2013 from about 4,800 people in late middle age who took part in a study related to heart disease risk factors and outcomes.
The scientists also tested blood samples taken during 1993, 1994, and 1995 from patients who then received follow-up exams in 2011 through 2013.
Blood samples were analyzed using a technology called SomaScan, developed by SomaLogic, a private, Colorado-based company.
The development team is looking ahead to larger studies.
TRENDPOST: The new findings offer a possible means of managing or perhaps even curing dementia by reducing the amount of certain proteins in the body, either through drugs or genetic therapies.
However, there’s a larger opportunity in this research.
If dementia’s risk can be seen years in advance of symptoms, persons carrying that risk can then make changes in lifestyle – diet, exercise, stress management, and similar things – to optimize their biochemistry and mitigate, or even in some cases eliminate, the risk.