By Ann-Marie Alcántara from Mashable

In a breakthrough for Alzheimer’s research, scientists have created a blood test that can accurately predict whether someone will develop the degenerative disease.

The blood test can identify 10 types of lipids, or fats, that apparently precede Alzheimer’s disease by up to three years. The test –– likely to be inexpensive if it hits the market — could identify those at risk before they develop symptoms. It will be available in as little as two years.

The researchers, from the University of Rochester, Georgetown University and UC Irvine, believe this test can help people start treatment options at the beginning or onset of the disease, rather than years into the process.

“This is a potential game-changer,” said Dr. Howard Federoff, senior author of the report and a neurologist at Georgetown University Medical Center to CNN. “My level of enthusiasm is very high.”

The research team tested 525 patients and found 10 blood biomarkers. Seventy-four of those patients were either diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or went on to develop it. The researchers then compared the blood of 53 patients who got the disease to 53 patients who did not develop the symptoms; that’s when they discovered the biomarkers.

The scientists went on to test this theory with new subjects — and found they were able to predict the future cognitive ability of these individuals with 90% accuracy.

“If researchers could identify likely victims years or a decade ahead of symptoms, they would gain new insights into how the disease wreaks havoc on the brain, and find drugs more likely to be effective against it,” said Robert Stern, professor at the Boston University School of Medicine to USA Today.

Larger clinical testing needs to be carried out, but that’s not quelling the hope these researchers feel. “We consider our results a major step toward the commercialization of a preclinical disease biomarker test that could be useful for large-scale screening to identify at-risk individuals,” Federoff told Science Daily.

“We’re designing a clinical trial where we’ll use this panel to identify people at high risk for Alzheimer’s to test a therapeutic agent that might delay or prevent the emergence of the disease,” he added.

The findings were published Sunday [9] in Nature Medicine.

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