Low cost blood test for Alzheimer’s improves diagnosis

The advance has been possible with a so-called APEX (Amplified Plasmonic EXosome) system that detects aggregated amyloid beta (Aβ), an early-stage molecular marker of AD.

According to NUS, the chip technology is comparable to brain PET imaging, the current gold standard for AD diagnosis, but costs about S$30 per test, or less than one per cent of the cost of PET imaging.

The current design could test 60 samples simultaneously and results are available in under an hour. As the APEX system uses native blood plasma without additional sample processing, it conducts direct measurement and is easy to use in clinical settings.

Led by Assistant Professor Shao Huilin from the NUS Institute for Health Innovation & Technology (NUS iHealthtech), the research team spent two years developing APEX and recently published its research findings in Nature Communications.

Early detection and intervention can improve the success of treatments but current AD diagnosis and monitoring – using clinical evaluation and neuropsychological assessments - are subjective and the disease tends to be detected at a late stage. Other alternatives such as PET imaging and cerebrospinal fluid test are expensive or require invasive lumbar punctures.