In the latest episode of the podcast Expert Voices in Dementia from the journal Practical Neurology, Sterling Johnson, PhD, shares news about detecting Alzheimer’s disease through blood testing and the important implications this research could have on Alzheimer’s disease treatment. Dr. Johnson’s lab is investigating the protein p-tau217 as a blood-based biomarker for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease.
The research team is studying the accuracy of a blood test to identify p-tau217, and comparing that test result to a person’s amyloid protein plaques found through PET scans or lumbar puncture.
“We found very high agreement between these expensive PET scans and these ominous spinal taps, that were available to these participants,” he said. “The overall accuracy was quite high. It was sufficient to conclude the blood test was equivalent to the lumbar puncture and very close to congruent to the PET scans. It was in many ways groundbreaking, but also this wasn’t the first study to show that the blood tests are this accurate. But to have this in 3 different cohorts, using this newer blood test, we think it was quite a important step forward.”
Listen to the episode on the podcast website here: Detecting Alzheimer’s with a Blood Test, Expert Voices in Dementia, March 21, 2025.