Alzheimer’s could be diagnosed 10 years earlier after world’s largest blood proteins study
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UK based project could pave way for blood tests to detect diseases years before diagnosis. Alzhemier’s disease could be diagnosed up to a decade earlier after the world’s biggest study of proteins is completed. The research, which will begin in the UK this month, will aim to pinpoint how diseases develops to pave a way for blood tests to detect the likes of cancer and dementia years before they are diagnosed by doctors.
![[Blood samples from volunteers being processed at UK Biobank, a huge blood-based research project]](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/05/16/18/dnatubes.jpg)
Pilot data from the new project has has already allowed researchers to identify elevated proteins in patients who go on to develop dementia up to a decade before diagnosis and seven years before the diagnosis of certain cancers. The UK Biobank Pharma Proteomics Project could be a “crucial piece in the jigsaw puzzle for scientists”, experts suggest, with the potential to transform healthcare by the end of the decade.
Professor Sir Rory Collins, principal investigator and chief executive of UK Biobank, said: “The data collected in the study will allow scientists around the world to conduct health-related research, exploring how lifestyle, environment and genetics lead through proteins to some people developing particular diseases, while others do not.
“That will allow us to identify who it is, who’s likely to develop disease well before they do, and we can then look at ways in which to prevent those conditions before they develop.”. The study will allow researchers to determine how genes, lifestyle and environment cause illness through changes in protein levels in the blood.
