REAL AD - A realistic screening approach for early Alzheimer´s disease

For disease-modifying treatments to be successful, early diagnosis is crucial. This is especially relevant for Alzheimer´s disease (AD) with its protracted preclinical phase.

Healthcare is not equipped for preventive measures such as large-scale AD screening in middle-aged individuals for which recent novel AD treatment options are most effective.

Groundbreaking recent developments, however, such as blood-based biomarkers (BBM) for AD pathophysiology and remotely-administered cognitive tests to detect early cognitive impairment in everyday environments offer novel, truly scalable and cost-effective ways to screen for cognitive and biomarker changes that indicate preclinical AD but have not been validated in a realistic population-based setting.In collaboration with the Västra Götaland Region Primary Healthcare, this large prospective study aims to establish the practical feasibility and validate the diagnostic and prognostic performance of a screening approach for preclinical AD.

A diverse population sample of at least 3,000 50-80-year-olds will be examined for preclinical AD using longitudinal remote cognitive testing and BBM analyses.

The results will be used to stratify a representative subsample that will subsequently undergo longitudinal state-of-the-art clinical, biomarker and neuroimaging assessments to validate the initial screening results.The goal of REAL AD is to inform a concrete, individualised diagnostic framework that can significantly improve AD prognosis.