Questions grow about the validity and usefulness of direct-to-consumer blood tests for Alzheimer’s Disease

By Judith Graham @ Kaiser Health News | October 19, 2023

For the first time, peo­ple wor­ried about their risk of Alzheimer’s dis­ease can go online, order a blood test, and receive results in the pri­va­cy of their homes. This might seem appeal­ing on the sur­face, but the devel­op­ment has Alzheimer’s researchers and clin­i­cians up in arms. The Quest Diag­nos­tics blood test, AD-Detect, mea­sures ele­vat­ed lev­els of amyloid-beta…

Read More

Hopes and Questions raised by Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi (lecanemab)

By Judith Graham @ Kaiser Health News | August 17, 2023

The FDA has approved Leqem­bi, the first dis­­ease-mod­­i­­fy­ing treat­ment for ear­­ly-stage Alzheimer’s and a pre­cur­sor con­di­tion, mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment. Medicare has said it will pay for the ther­a­py. Med­ical cen­ters across the coun­try are scram­bling to final­ize poli­cies and pro­ce­dures for pro­vid­ing the med­ica­tion to patients, pos­si­bly by summer’s end or ear­ly autumn. It’s a…

Read More

To screen, or not to screen (for dementia), that is still the question

By Judith Graham @ Kaiser Health News | March 11, 2020

A lead­ing group of med­ical experts on Tues­day declined to endorse cog­ni­tive screen­ing for old­er adults, fuel­ing a debate that has sim­mered for years. The U.S. Pre­ven­tive Ser­vices Task Force said it could nei­ther rec­om­mend nor oppose cog­ni­tive screen­ing, cit­ing insuf­fi­cient sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence of the practice’s ben­e­fits and harms and call­ing for fur­ther stud­ies. The task…

Read More