A research team in Quebec has detected two early plasma markers to detect Alzheimer’s disease five years before it started. The results of this recent study led by doctoral student Mohamed Raâfet Ben Khedher and postdoctoral student Mohamed Haddad, led by Professor Charles Ramassamy of the Institut national de la recherche Scientifique (INRS), were published in the scientific journal prestigious Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions (TRCI).
Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is usually based on a series of psychometric tests assessing cognitive function, brain imaging and cerebrospinal fluid analysis. However, their trials are limited.
The lumbar puncture is invasive, while brain imaging is expensive and not 100% reliable. This adds complexity to constant follow-up. “
Charles Ramassamy, Professor, INRS
In addition, people with the disease are often found in the late stages of the disease. “We need to find more and more early symptoms so that we can function as quickly as possible. When the disease is symptomatic, there is little, if any, relapse,” he explains.
The research team accepted this challenge by finding two symptoms, which can be detected through a blood test, allowing them to track the progression of the disease. These signals are found in extracellular plasma bones, pockets that are released by every cell in the body and circulate in the bloodstream.
Alteration of signals
The team focused on “sporadic” Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of the disease. It comes mainly from the presence of the vulnerability gene APOE4, the E4 version of the gene encoding for apolipoprotein. Patients with this gene who developed the disease had symptoms five years later that differed with the progression of the disease.
The research was conducted by analyzing blood samples collected as part of the Canadian Survey on Health and Aging (CSHA). The population studied included patients with mental disorders, but not suffering from depression, and only a few of whom developed Alzheimer’s disease. Professor Ramassamy hopes to study a larger population with pre- and post-disease samples.
This would allow the progression of symptoms to be determined after symptoms have arisen. His research on the symptoms located in the bones opens up the possibility of studying other diseases, such as viral depression.
Source:
Institut national de la recherche Scientifique – INRS