A collaboration involving Florida researchers is expanding efforts to develop a blood test for Alzheimer’s disease.
Neurologist Dr. Ranjan Duara, the director of Mount Sinai Medical Centers’ Wien Center for Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders, has been part of the team that found beta amyloid biomarkers in blood samples long before the biomarkers led to the formation of Alzheimer’s causing plaque in the brain.
“We looked at the relationship between the levels of amyloid in the blood to the PET scan which shows the amyloid plaques in the brain and what we found is it was 90 percent correct in detecting amyloid in the PET scan the blood test,” Duara said.
He said an accurate blood test could be used as a simple screening method for the general population, allowing doctors to find and treat Alzheimer’s at an earlier stage.
MEDICATIONS MAY LOWER DEATH RISK FROM ADHD
A large study out of Sweden suggests treating ADHD with medication can help reduce the overall mortality risk for patients.
Researchers tracked nearly 150,000 people diagnosed with ADHD and found a 19-percent decrease in the two-year mortality rate for those who got treatment.
Experts said the report emphasizes the importance of timely ADHD diagnoses.
MATERNAL HEALTH CRISIS IN U.S. QUESTIONED
And a new study published March 13,2024 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology has challenged the reported scale of the U.S. maternal health crisis.
It suggested that reliance on a pregnancy checkbox on death certificates may have led to an over-estimation of maternal deaths because the checkbox does not indicate whether the pregnancy had anything to do with the woman’s death.
As a result, maternal death rates in the U.S. may actually be lower and more stable than federal data suggests.