Blood tests for Alzheimer’s could be on NHS within five years

Experts have said that blood tests for Alzheimer’s could be available on the NHS within five years.

Alzheimer’s Research UK and the Alzheimer’s Society have launched a £5 million project to bring simple tests to the health service to speed up diagnosis and reach more people.

At present, diagnosing people with Alzheimer’s can be difficult and relies on brain imaging or painful lumbar punctures, where a sample of cerebrospinal fluid is drawn from the lower back.

Less than two-thirds of people in England with dementia have a formal diagnosis and many can face long waits to be seen.

But with £5 million of funding from the People’s Postcode Lottery, the charities are working with the National Institute for Health and Care Research to make blood tests available on the NHS.

Pharmaceutical giants Roche and Eli Lilly have also announced that they have joined forces to develop a blood test for Alzheimer’s disease.

Some tests are already being used in private clinics in Hong Kong and the US, but UK charities say more work is needed to ensure tests are measuring the right combination of biomarkers.

Medicines slow cognitive decline

It has become more pressing to develop new diagnostic tests since the medicines donanemab and lecanemab were found to slow cognitive decline. Both drugs made headlines around the world and are set to be assessed for use in the UK.

Dr Susan Kohlhaas, executive director of research and partnerships at Alzheimer’s Research UK, told a briefing: “We expect more people to be coming forward for diagnosis, we expect them to be coming forward at a younger age and we expect them to be coming forward with less obvious symptoms.

She said: “We’re sitting on the cusp of a new era of dementia treatments” but “the NHS doesn’t possess the required levels of diagnostic infrastructure to cope with this growing demand”.

Pilot new blood tests

Dr Kohlhaas added: “Currently, only 2 per cent of people are offered advanced diagnostic tests like PET scans and lumbar punctures.

“Low-cost tools like blood tests that are non-invasive and simpler to administer than current gold standard methods are the answer to this.”

The project – the Blood Biomarker Challenge – will work with world-class researchers to pilot new blood tests in the NHS that can diagnose different forms of dementia earlier and more accurately.

There is no suggestion as yet the tests could be used for mass population testing.

Fiona Carragher, the director of research and influencing at the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “New drugs targeting early-stage Alzheimer’s disease are just around the corner, but without a diagnosis, people simply won’t be able to access them if they are approved.”

She said introducing a blood test for dementia into UK healthcare systems would be “a truly game-changing win in the fight against this devastating disease”.

Dementia affects about 900,000 people in the UK and experts predict that will rise to 1.4 million people by 2040.