Summary

A new blood test, ADtect®, has been developed that can aid the early detection of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). The test is based on measuring the expression of selected genes in blood and is defined as the AD-specific gene signature. ADtect®comprises a low density array of 96 selected gene assays using RNA extracted from a blood sample. The performance of each of the 96 gene assays is calculated with an algorithm resulting in a positive or negative test score value indicating the presence or absence of AD. In a multicenter study of 412 subjects the test is able to discriminate AD subjects from cognitively healthy controls with a 72% overall agreement with the clinical diagnosis, an imperfect “gold standard”. The test performance is confirmed in two independent validation studies and shows a similar and consistent good performance.

It was found that 32 (38%) of 84 genes in ADtect® encode proteins with a biological function associated with AD, brain or neuronal function. Four of them are also listed in the current AlzGene database. The identity of the12 remaining genes included in the test could not be found in available data bases.

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