Researchers Develop an Improved Measure of Genetic Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease
Boston University researchers led by Dr. Lindsay Farrer, PhD, and Xiaoling Zhang, MD, PhD, have developed a new genetic test that does a much better job predicting Alzheimer’s risk across people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds – a major upgrade over earlier tools, which were built almost entirely using data from people of European descent and worked poorly for everyone else. The new score, tested in tens of thousands of people, was linked not just to Alzheimer’s diagnosis but also to real warning signs like memory decline, brain changes, and biological markers of the disease, suggesting it could help doctors catch high-risk patients earlier and match people to the right clinical trials and prevention strategies. Read the full article from BU here.