CD-69 test gives 91% accurate AD diagnosis

Early detection of Alzheimer's disease is crucial for risk assessment and testing new therapies. Eventually it will also allow early intervention with better drugs, especially the new wave of disease-modifying therapies, once they are approved. Several important advances in this area were presented at the 2008 International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease, in Chicago, USA.

In a biomarker study performed in the USA by GW Medical, the expression of CD-69, a protein involved in white blood cell growth and production, was measured in multiple cell lines in people with probable Alzheimer's disease (n=32), healthy controls (n=30) and other dementias, chiefly Parkinson's disease dementia (n=26).

Variations in levels of CD-69 enabled the researcher to clearly differentiate between AD patients and demented PD subjects. According to the findings, the test was accurate 91% of the time when the diagnosis was AD and 92% when it was PD. The assay correctly differentiated people with AD from cognitively normal subjects 88% of the time when the diagnosis was Alzheimer's and 82% of when the subject was cognitively normal. In addition, the team led by Thomas Arendt, director of the Paul Flechsig Institute, University of Leipzig, Germany, found that the test results did not vary with dementia severity as measured by the Mini Mental State Exam.