Researchers find way to assess dementia process using blood tests
- 5 years ago
Local researchers have developed a way to use a blood test... to determine how far dementia has progressed in Alzheimer's patients.
This way,... doctors can prescribe necessary treatments to prevent the symptoms from worsening.
Cho Sung-min reports.
A team of researchers at Seoul National University has come up with a way to diagnose dementia... and determine how far the disease has progressed, using a simple blood test.
The researchers said they paid special attention to the amount of protein called tau inside the brain.
Abundant in nerve cells, tau is one of the proteins known to induce Alzheimer's disease.
The researchers said the amount of tau accumulated in the brain shows a clear correlation to how much it is concentrated in a person's blood stream.
This conclusion was derived after a range of blood tests was conducted on real dementia patients.
"When tau in the brain turns abnormal and binds to each other, it damages and kills the brain cells. Once that happens, tau protein is exposed to blood, and that's how its concentration level in the blood rises."
According to data,... around ten percent of senior citizens in South Korea are suffering from dementia... and with the count on a continuous rise, the country's total number of dementia patients has topped seven-hundred-fifty-thousand.
The world is yet to find a permanent cure to the disease, but medical experts say the recently discovered way of assessing dementia could make it more convenient and easier to monitor the disease for both doctors and patients.
The researchers also added... they can use this way to systematically sort out which dementia patients need extra care and prescribe various treatments to prevent the symptoms from getting worse.
Cho Sung-min, Arirang News.
This way,... doctors can prescribe necessary treatments to prevent the symptoms from worsening.
Cho Sung-min reports.
A team of researchers at Seoul National University has come up with a way to diagnose dementia... and determine how far the disease has progressed, using a simple blood test.
The researchers said they paid special attention to the amount of protein called tau inside the brain.
Abundant in nerve cells, tau is one of the proteins known to induce Alzheimer's disease.
The researchers said the amount of tau accumulated in the brain shows a clear correlation to how much it is concentrated in a person's blood stream.
This conclusion was derived after a range of blood tests was conducted on real dementia patients.
"When tau in the brain turns abnormal and binds to each other, it damages and kills the brain cells. Once that happens, tau protein is exposed to blood, and that's how its concentration level in the blood rises."
According to data,... around ten percent of senior citizens in South Korea are suffering from dementia... and with the count on a continuous rise, the country's total number of dementia patients has topped seven-hundred-fifty-thousand.
The world is yet to find a permanent cure to the disease, but medical experts say the recently discovered way of assessing dementia could make it more convenient and easier to monitor the disease for both doctors and patients.
The researchers also added... they can use this way to systematically sort out which dementia patients need extra care and prescribe various treatments to prevent the symptoms from getting worse.
Cho Sung-min, Arirang News.