2023-05-31 06:16:14
About 900,000 French people are affected by Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists are trying to understand why some people develop this neurodegenerative disease. To determine this, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh tested the blood of more than 1,000 cognitively impaired elderly people with and without amyloid pathology.
What did they discover? “Only those who had a combination of amyloid load and blood markers of abnormal astrocyte activation or reactivity would progress to symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in the future. A crucial discovery for the development of drugs aimed at halting progression, ”details the press release of the study. These findings were published May 29 in the journal Nature Medicine.
A key regulator
“Our study supports that screening for the presence of amyloid in the brain as well as blood biomarkers of astrocyte reactivity represents the optimal screening to identify patients most at risk of progressing to Alzheimer’s disease,” explained lead author Tharick Pascoal, associate professor of psychiatry and neurology at Pitt. Before completing: “This places astrocytes at the center as key regulators of disease progression, challenging the idea that amyloid is sufficient to trigger Alzheimer’s disease”.
These findings highlighted that only those who were positive for both amyloid and astrocyte reactivity showed signs of progressive development of tau pathology, indicating a predisposition to clinical symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. . Through this study, the researchers suggest that cognitive impairment might be identified and predicted with a blood test.
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