27 May 2021
Plasma phospho-tau 181 and p-tau 217 can distinguish people with Alzheimer’s disease from controls most, but not all, of the time. To increase diagnostic accuracy, researchers are creating algorithms combining p-tau with other fluid biomarker and diagnostic data. In the May 24 Nature Medicine, researchers led by Oskar Hansson and Sebastian Palmqvist, both at Lund University, Sweden, reported just such an algorithm to predict AD. They report that among people with a subjective memory complaint, plasma p-tau, APOE genotype, executive function, and memory scores together predicted AD onset within two to six years with 90 percent accuracy. In the same cohort, clinicians were about 72 percent accurate. Alzforum first reported on the algorithm at this year’s International Conference on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases (Apr 2021 conference news).