Getting a misdiagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) can be devastating, but 1 in 5 AD cases may be incorrect. In fact, one patient who was misdiagnosed with AD said the treatment he was under for seven years destroyed his life. The problem is that current AD diagnostic approaches have inadequate accuracy, especially in the early stages of the disease and other mixed dementias.
The most promising breakthrough is an autopsy-confirmed, minimally invasive skin test to support clinicians’ definitive diagnosis of AD vs. other forms of dementia. DISCERN™, for instance, is a diagnostic test that assesses the factors directly related to the formation of synaptic connections in the brain impacting loss of memory and cognition in people living with AD, as well as regulators of amyloid plaque and tau formation—hallmarks of AD at autopsy.
This test has greater than 95% sensitivity and specificity in the diagnosis and management of AD and combines three biomarkers: 1) Morphometric Imaging to measure fibroblasts’ ability to form networks, 2) Protein Kinase C ε to measure synaptic growth and 3) AD-Index to measure phosphorylation of Erk1 and Erk2 in response to bradykinin.
