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Italy Persons with Alzheimer’s disease have low levels of a protein in their platelets, a difference that could be used as the first blood test for diagnosing the disorder, said Dr. Monica Di Luca of the University of Milan in Italy. Alzheimer’s disease is difficult to differentiate from other types of dementia and can be definitively diagnosed only by examining brain tissue. Therefore, most diagnoses are confirmed only after the patient’s death. But according to a study published in the Archives of Neurology, persons with Alzheimer’s disease have lower than average platelet levels of one particular type of amyloid beta precursor protein (APP). Amyloid beta is found in plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients. The protein is derived from APP, which is found in other types of tissue, and is in particularly high concentrations in platelets. The investigators analyzed blood samples from 32 patients with Alzheimer’s disease, 25 age-matched controls without dementia, and 16 other patients with other forms of dementia. The researchers compared a larger version of APP to a smaller version of the same protein. They found that the ratio of large to small was .31 for those with Alzheimer’s disease, about 60% less than healthy controls (0.84) and those with other types of dementia (0.97). Whether this change will be suitable for an adjunctive diagnostic tool in Alzheimer’s disease in a large population of patients is under investigation, the authors concluded. As yet there is no pe; ripheral marker for Alzheimer’s disease that serves as a specific diagnostic test according to an editorial by Drs. Ashley Bush and Rudolph Tanzi of the Genetics and Aging Unit at the Massachusetts General Hospital East. It will be interesting to await future studies that determine the predictive capabilities of this procedure.