Pharmaceuticals Magazine – Researchers at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) have developed a blood test that has the potential to predict Alzheimer’s disease three and a half years before clinical diagnosis.
Their findings, published in Brain, show that components in the blood can modulate neurogenesis, namely the formation of new brain cells, in the hippocampus. Alzheimer’s affects neurogenesis in the hippocampus in the early stages of the disease, but previous studies have only evaluated neurogenesis in later stages.
As part of their study, the researchers collected blood samples from 56 people with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) over several years – 36 of the 56 study participants received a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. The blood samples of these individuals were shown to induce decreased cell growth and increased apoptotic cell death.
“Previous studies have shown that blood from young mice can have a rejuvenating effect on the cognition of older mice by increasing hippocampal neurogenesis. This gave us the idea to model the process of neurogenesis in discs using human brain cells and human blood. In our research, we aim to use this model to understand the process of neurogenesis and use changes in this process to predict Alzheimer’s disease and find the first evidence in humans that the body’s circulatory system can influence the brain’s ability to form new brain cells.” said Professor IoVAT King and the study’s lead author, Sandrine Thuret.
