BioFINDER study: Blood test sharpens Alzheimer’s diagnosis in primary care

Sebastian Palmqvist
Photo: Tove Smeds

LONDON — Primary care physicians’ accuracy in identifying Alzheimer’s as the cause of a patient’s cognitive symptoms rose from 62 to 88 percent once they had a blood test result, according to research presented this week at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference and led by Sebastian Palmqvist, associate professor of neurology in the BioFINDER group at Lund University. The study was highlighted in New York Times.

Doctors reported that the result would change their management – medication, referral to a memory clinic, or discharge – in more than 60 percent of cases. The test itself was roughly 90 percent accurate. The work is not yet peer-reviewed.
Palmqvist said the test replaces what had been an “almost impossible task”, and argued that a thorough clinical evaluation combined with a blood test can usually stand without a confirmatory PET scan.

Others are more cautious. Ronald Petersen of the Mayo Clinic corroborates results, while also citing cases where blood test and PET scan disagree. Michelle Mielke noted that false positives, around 10 percent for the p-tau217 test, and inflated by conditions such as kidney disease, could leave many people wrongly labelled, with treatable causes of cognitive symptoms overlooked.

Source: Smith, Dana G., and Belluck, Pam. “Alzheimer’s Blood Tests Offer New Promise to Diagnose and Predict the Disease.” The New York Times (Online), 15 July 2026. ProQuest document ID 3364179941.

Read more at: New York Times