New dementia test could be as easy as giving blood
Researchers at the Royal Melbourne Hospital have found a simple blood test could make early diagnosis of dementia possible for thousands of Australians.
Though considered an older person’s disease, nearly 30,000 Australians with the condition developed it before they turned 65.
To make diagnosis more complex, the first symptoms of dementia are often depression and anxiety, meaning many people do not realise they have it.
“In many situations, the blood tests, the brain scans, even the memory testing can be close to normal,” Professor Dennis Velakoulis from the Royal Melbourne Hospital told 7.30.
“There are many situations that general practitioners and specialists face where it’s unclear if someone has a mental health or psychiatric disorder, like depression.”
Professor Velakoulis hopes the research will help patients get their diagnosis earlier.
The test works by measuring the amount of neurofilament light in a person’s blood.
“Neurofilament light, or NFL, is a protein that lives in brain cells. It helps to maintain the structure of brain cells. And when a brain cell is damaged, it’s released,” he said.
“When we see it elevated in the spinal fluid or blood, it indicates that there’s been some brain injury and the brain cells have died.”
One of the more promising aspects of this finding is that neurofilament light is not present in samples from patients with mental illnesses. This means that the test could distinguish between the two conditions.
This means that the test could also be used to assist in diagnosing other rare neurological conditions that result in brain cell death, such as cerebral vasculitis, who might otherwise be misdiagnosed with a mental illness.
“People with psychiatric illnesses, or people who are healthy, have normal levels of NFL, because there’s no brain cells dying. But in many neurological disorders, particularly in dementia, there are brain cells that are dying and releasing NFL,” Professor Velakoulis said.
Though neurofilament light is commonly measured in spinal fluid samples, technological improvements could mean that the test could be done with blood instead.
“In the past, we were measuring NFL only in cerebrospinal fluid, because the levels there were higher. Now with new technology, and new machines that can measure very, very low levels of proteins, we are able to look for it in the blood.”
The researchers hope that with more research, the technology can be developed and made available to GPs across Australia.
“If the test is confirmed to perform in the same way that it did in our earlier study, then we would be hoping that this blood test would be widely available to general practitioners and other specialists.”