Scientists have discovered blood markers that could help identify people with a rare, inherited form of Alzheimer’s disease a decade before symptoms begin to appear.
Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have found that a protein called GFAP can appear in blood samples of people who are in the very early stages of the neurodegenerative disease. The scientists said their findings, published in the journal Brain, could lead to earlier detection of the disease and help slow it down with drugs.
Charlotte Johansson, a doctoral student at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society at the Karolinska Institutet, who is the first author of the study, said: “Our results suggest that GFAP, a presumed biomarker for activated immune cells in the brain, reflects changes in the brain due to Alzheimer’s disease that occur before the accumulation of tau protein and measurable neuronal damage.”
