Blood-based biomarkers hold great promise to revolutionize the diagnostic and...

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Abstract
Blood-based biomarkers hold great promise to revolutionize the diagnostic and prognostic
work-up of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in clinical practice. This is very timely, considering
the recent development of anti-amyloid-β (Aβ) immunotherapies. Several assays for measuring
phosphorylated tau (p-tau) in plasma exhibit high diagnostic accuracy in distinguishing AD from
all other neurodegenerative diseases in patients with cognitive impairment. Prognostic models
based on plasma p-tau levels can also predict future development of AD dementia in patients
with mild cognitive complaints. The use of such high-performing plasma p-tau assays in the
clinical practice of specialist memory clinics would reduce the need for more costly investigations
involving cerebrospinal fluid samples or positron emission tomography. Indeed, blood-based
biomarkers already facilitate identification of individuals with pre-symptomatic AD in the context