Blood Tests Target Alzheimer Disease Diagnosis Gap at Psychiatry Conference
Recent FDA clearances of blood-based biomarkers for Alzheimer disease are helping clinicians move past imprecise labels such as “senile dementia” to target specific therapies.
Grossberg outlined how clinicians should use the newly available blood-based biomarkers and noted that the biggest gap has historically been imprecise diagnosis. Patients are often referred with labels such as “dementia” or “senile dementia,” or their symptoms are put down to age-related cognitive change. As clinicians learn to use these tests appropriately, Grossberg expects fewer “wastebasket” diagnoses and more specific ones.
FDA Clearances Expand Biomarker Access for Symptomatic Adults
The U.S. Meanwhile, C2N Diagnostics’ PrecivityAD2 is indicated for symptomatic adults ages 40 and older, combining amyloid and tau biomarkers into an algorithm known as amyloid probability score 2 (APS2).
Validation data show PrecivityAD2 has a positive predictive value of 92.1% and a negative predictive value of 93.1% when compared with established reference methods like amyloid PET scans or cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers, MedicalNewsToday noted.
Clinical Integration and Prevention Strategies
Geriatric psychiatry experts stress that positive biomarker results function as risk factors rather than absolute guarantees of disease progression.
For individuals without symptoms who worry about later-in-life dementia, testing experts such as Nicholas Ashton of Arizona’s Banner Health stress that “the worried well should not be getting those tests” outside of a research study. I want to know what my status is,
Yost said, and if signs of trouble develop, what I can do about it to either avoid it or slow it down.
Instead of testing before symptoms appear, doctors advise focusing on addressing potentially preventable brain risks. Be aggressive,
advised Dr. Josef Coresh of NYU Langone Health, the study’s senior author. Even delaying those risky conditions has a huge payoff.
Coresh also noted that people should be very serious with their physician about the value of lowering high blood pressure as early as possible for as many years as possible, as other studies have shown that aggressively treating it helps brain health.
What Happens Next
The FDA-cleared version of C2N Diagnostics’ PrecivityAD2 test is expected to become commercially available later in 2026, expanding clinical access for younger symptomatic cohorts.
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