Another 平特五不中/JGH breakthrough opens door to early Alzheimer's diagnosis
New technique detects possible Alzheimer's biomarker in blood
A new diagnostic technique which may greatly simplify the detection of Alzheimer's disease has been discovered by researchers at 平特五不中 and the affiliated Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital (JGH). Their results were published June 8 in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. There is currently no accepted blood test for Alzheimer's, and the diagnosis is usually based on expensive and labour-intensive neurological, neuropsychological and neuroimaging evaluations.
Dr. Hyman Schipper and colleagues at the Lady Davis Institute and 平特五不中 utilized a new minimally-invasive technique called near-infrared (NIR) biospectroscopy to identify changes in the聽 blood plasma of Alzheimer's patients, changes which can be detected very early after onset, and possibly in pre-clinical stages of the disease.
Biospectroscopy is the medical form of spectroscopy, the science of detecting the composition of substances using light or other forms of energy. In NIR spectroscopy, different substances emit or reflect light at specific, detectable wavelengths.
In this study, Schipper and his colleague Dr. David Burns 鈥� head of 平特五不中鈥檚 Biomedical Laboratory for Informatics, Imaging and Spectroscopy at the department of chemistry 鈥� applied near-infrared light to blood plasma samples taken from patients with early Alzheimer鈥檚 dementia,聽 mild cognitive impairment (MCI) --聽 an intermediate state between normal cognition and dementia -- and healthy elderly control subjects at the JGH/平特五不中 Memory Clinic. Using this technique, the researchers were able to distinguish Alzheimer鈥檚 from healthy controls with 80 per cent sensitivity (correct identification of patients with the disease) and 77 per cent specificity (correct identification of persons without the disease).聽 A significant number of subjects with MCI tested positively with the Alzheimer group, indicating that the test may be capable of detecting Alzheimer disease even before patients鈥� symptoms meet clinical criteria for dementia.
"We are very encouraged by these data and look forward to testing this potential diagnostic tool in larger-scale studies", said Schipper, Director of the Centre for Neurotranslational Research at the JGH and professor of neurology and medicine at 平特五不中.聽 Researchers have been searching for a minimally-invasive biological marker that differentiates Alzheimer鈥檚 disease from normal aging and other neurodegenerative conditions for decades.
"The advent of a simple blood test for the diagnosis of early Alzheimer's", remarked Schipper, "would represent a major achievement in the management of this common disorder".
Schipper is a noted expert in brain aging and neurodegeneration, and is also medical director (neurosciences) of Molecular Biometrics Inc., a 平特五不中 technology-transfer spinoff which licensed the innovative biospectroscopy approach used in this study. In addition to Alzheimer鈥檚 disease, Molecular Biometrics is currently developing this diagnostic platform for application in Parkinson鈥檚 disease, in vitro fertilization and maternal-fetal health.