1. Home>
2. Specialties>
3. General Medicine>
4. Summary and Comment

A BIOCHEMICAL ASSAY FOR ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE.

Investigations of Alzheimer's disease have been hindered by difficulty defining objective diagnostic criteria, but a promising new assay has been developed and tested by a group of investigators from academic medicine and Abbott Laboratories. The assay is based on a monoclonal antibody called ALZ-50, which binds to a protein marker (A- 68) that is highly specific for Alzheimer's disease. After developing techniques to minimize cross-reactivity with normal brain tissue, the investigators tested the assay in postmortem brain samples from 27 normal controls, 28 neurologic disease controls, and 56 cases of Alzheimer's disease (diagnosed clinically by standard criteria and confirmed postmortem by histopathologic examination).

The test was negative for all 55 control cases, and positive for 48 (86 percent) of the 56 Alzheimer's cases. Most of the "false-negative" results were among Alzheimer's cases in whom the clinical diagnosis was equivocal. This early experience with the assay suggests that it allows reliable and rapid postmortem diagnosis of this devastating disease.

— THL

Published in Journal Watch General Medicine June 12, 1990

Citation(s):

Ghanbari HA et al. Biochemical assay of Alzheimer's disease-associated protein(s) in human brain tissue. JAMA 1990 Jun 6 263 2907-2910.

• Medline abstract (Free)