Sysmex and Eisai shared research from their joint effort to create a diagnostic blood test for Alzheimer's disease at this week's International Conference on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases (AD/PD 2022) in Barcelona, Spain.
As part of a nonexclusive agreement to create diagnostic agents for dementia, researchers from the companies compared the performance of the plasma beta-amyloid ratio measured using the Sysmex HISCL automated immunoassay system with that of amyloid status on PET imaging as determined by the Centiloid method. Their technique was assessed in a discovery study in 180 patients and in a validation study involving 191 patients who were clinically diagnosed with mild Alzheimer's disease or mild cognitive impairment.
In the discovery study, the researchers found that the plasma beta-amyloid ratio was significantly lower in the group of patients with positive beta-amyloid results on PET than those with negative PET results. Furthermore, the ratio yielded an area under the curve of 0.93, sensitivity of 97.5%, and specificity of 80.8% for predicting beta-amyloid PET status, according to the authors.
Other results also suggested that the plasma beta-amyloid ratio could potentially indicate the presence of amyloid pathology in the brain earlier than it could be detected on PET, according to the authors.
