Alzheimer’s disease is hard to detect at its very start, when treatments may be most effective. A new study in Nature Communications reports that a simple nasal swab can detect early biological changes linked to Alzheimer’s before thinking and memory problems appear.
Researchers applied a numbing spray and a clinician guided a tiny brush into the upper part of the nose where smell-detecting nerve cells live. The swab collected living nerve and immune cells. Scientists then measured which genes were active in each collected cell to learn about processes occurring in the brain.
The team led by Bradley J. Goldstein of Duke University School of Medicine compared samples from 22 participants. They measured thousands of genes across hundreds of thousands of individual cells, producing millions of data points. The nasal swab detected early shifts, including in people who had laboratory signs of Alzheimer’s but no symptoms. A combined nose tissue gene score separated early and clinical Alzheimer’s from healthy controls about 81% of the time.
A study participant, Mary Umstead, joined the research in honor of her late sister Mariah, who was diagnosed at 57 with young-onset Alzheimer’s. Current blood tests detect markers that appear later; the nasal swab captures living neural activity and may give an earlier, more direct view. Duke has filed a US patent, funding came from the National Institutes of Health, and the team is expanding studies and exploring whether the swab can track treatment effects over time.
Difficult words
- nasal swab — small sample taken from inside the nose
- clinician — a healthcare professional who treats patients
- immune — relating to the body's defence against disease
- gene — a unit of heredity that controls traitsgenes
- participant — a person who takes part in a studyparticipants
- clinical — connected to medical illness and treatment
- patent — a legal right to control an invention
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Discussion questions
- Would you be willing to try a nasal swab test for early Alzheimer’s detection? Why or why not?
- How could an earlier, more direct test change care for people at risk of Alzheimer’s?
- What are possible benefits and concerns of using a nasal swab instead of current blood tests?
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