New Blood Test for Alzheimers Has 94% Accuracy
27 Aug 2019A newer blood test for detecting brain changes indicative of early Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is becoming more realistic and could change everything for the field.
Researchers of a study published in Neurology, found that assessing the β-amyloid (Aβ) 42 and Aβ40 ratio in blood with the use of a high-accuracy evaluation is 94 percent accurate in brain amyloidosis diagnosis, using the reference standards CSF phosphorylated (p-tau) 181/Aβ42 or amyloid PET.
According to senior investigator and St. Louis’s Washington University School of Medicine’s professor of neurology, Randall J. Bateman, MD, at the moment, individuals are screened for clinical trials with expensive and time-consuming brain scans and it takes years to enroll people.
He added, that with a blood test, each month they could possibly screen thousands of individuals, meaning they could enroll individuals in clinical trials more efficiently, helping them find treatments quicker. And that could have a huge affect on the expense of AD and the suffering it causes to individuals.
Simple Screening Tool
Using a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and immunoprecipitation evaluation, the researchers assessed CSF samples and Aβ42/Aβ40 in plasma they gathered inside the 18 months of an amyloid PET scan from 158 older individuals mostly cognitively normal.
The combination of apolipoprotein (APOE) ε4 status, age and Aβ42/Aβ40 had “extremely high” (AUC, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.90 – 0.97) association with amyloid PET. This suggested the plasma Aβ42/Aβ40 could serve as a tool to screen individuals who have a higher chance of AD dementia, according to the researchers.
Also, those with negative amyloid PET scan, but a positive plasma Aβ42/Aβ40 have a 15-fold greater chance of changing to amyloid PET-positive (P = .01).
With summer vacation is coming to its end, parents are beginning to focus on preparing their children for the upcoming school year. Part of this focus should be ensuring your children are being safely transported back and forth from school.
According to the American School Bus Council, students are around 70 times likely to safely arrive at school if they travel by school bus instead of car. With teenage drivers having higher rates of crashes than adults, the school bus provides students with a far safer alternative. Plus, the students can text, socialize and talk with their friends without the dangerous risks involved with inexperienced or distracted driving which can affect everybody on the road. Below are some tips to keep students and school bus drivers safer.
For Students
- Arrive at the Bus Stop On Time
Children should arrive at their bus stop a minimum of five minutes before the scheduled bus arrival time. Take your child to the bus stop beforehand and show them where they will wait for the bus to arrive. This should be a minimum of six feet from the curb. If your children are younger, remind them they should run or play around the bus stop.
George Mason University, located in Fairfax, VA has a delivery system that is taking campus by storm. As of now, students, faculty, and staff can order food and drink delivery from a fleet of helpful robots.
The program came about as the result of a partnership between Starship Technologies, an area robotics firm, and major food services organization Sodexo. Service to students and staff is made possible via the Starship Deliveries app, which promises to deliver a complete transformation of college food services with brands like Starbucks, Blaze Pizza, and even Dunkin’ Donuts getting on board and offering delivery to hungry students and staff across college campuses.
The robot can be tracked via GPS as it makes its delivery so starving students and associate professors can track the progress of their food or coffee fixes, as the case may be. Upon arrival, the robot sends users an alert and they can unlock the robot’s door, so they can receive their items, and make payments via their mobile phone apps.
