Category Archives: Research

Health, Medical, Research, Science

Blood test that can detect Alzheimer’s 15 years before onset

ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE

A SIMPLE blood test can detect Alzheimer’s disease up to 15 years before symptoms begin, a major trial has found. It paves the way for a national screening programme.

The trial found that the test was as accurate as the current gold standard for diagnosing the condition.

For the first time, doctors were able to say if a person had a high, medium, or low chance, of having the disease – ruling out further invasive procedures.

Experts have said it would “revolutionise” diagnosis, making Alzheimer’s as easy to test and detect as for other routine health conditions such as high cholesterol.

Patients could expect results within days of visiting their GP, rather than the years it currently takes to get a diagnosis. This could have huge implications for future treatments, removing the barriers for a diagnosis – such as long waits for spinal taps or brain scans – and speeding up trials.

It could also pave the way for screening over-50s once more effective treatments become available.

Made by diagnostics company ALZpath, it was found to be 97 per cent accurate at detecting traces of the “tau” protein, which was linked to developing Alzheimer’s disease during the eight-year trials. These proteins start to build up on the brain 10 to 15 years before symptoms start showing.

Researchers in Sweden found high levels of the “tau” protein in the blood test corresponded to high levels of Alzheimer markers seen in expensive diagnostic brain scans and painful lumbar punctures.

The more of this leaked “tau” brain protein in the blood, the more likely or advanced the Alzheimer’s disease was in the tests involving 786 people. Growing evidence suggests biomarker changes like these can be detected in the blood years before other signs of the disease appear in the brain.

It means if scientists can find a way to stop these protein levels from rising, they could effectively halt Alzheimer’s in its tracks.

With breakthrough treatments such as donanemab and lecanemab on the horizon, experts say it is vital to have quick and reliable diagnoses. Professor David Curtis of University College London Genetics Institute said this was “one half of the solution”, while we await effective treatments.

He added: “This potentially could have huge implications. Everybody over 50 could be routinely screened every few years, in much the same way as they are now screened for high cholesterol.”

Around 900,000 people in the UK live with dementia – with Alzheimer’s the most common form. The growing ageing population means numbers are expected to rise to 1.6million by 2040, making a cheap screening tool vital to get to grips with the challenge.

Alzheimer’s Research UK analysis found 74,261 people died from dementia in 2022 compared with 69,178 a year earlier, making it the country’s biggest killer. While previous blood tests have shown promise, these findings have caused particular excitement given the high accuracy levels, large study size, and because the test already exists commercially.

It is also the first time a blood test has been found to be at least as good as a painful lumbar puncture or spinal tap for detecting elevated levels of the tau protein, according to the research team at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Lumbar punctures involve taking fluid from the patient’s spinal cord. The inexpensive tests – priced at around £150 – could also be used to monitor a patient’s condition, allowing more tailored trials or treatment in future.

Dr Richard Oakley, of the Alzheimer’s Society, urged that more research would be needed, but said: “This study is a huge welcome step in the right direction as it shows that blood tests can be just as accurate as more invasive and expensive tests.

“It suggests results from these tests could be clear enough to not require follow-up investigations for some people living with Alzheimer’s disease, which could speed up diagnosis.”

The tests would need regulatory approval before widespread use. But they could form part of NHS trials starting imminently and looking to roll out blood tests for Alzheimer’s within the next five years.

The scientists’ findings were first published in JAMA Neurology.

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Research, Science

Scientists reveal that the proton’s size is moveable

PARTICLE PHYSICS

Intro: The radius of the proton, a subatomic particle, seems to vary depending on how you look at it

THE proton, one of the building blocks for all matter, is proving to be an awkward customer to size up. If you look at its charge, it will have one radius, but if you look at its mass, you will see a different, smaller radius.

A new picture of the proton is emerging. In the 1960s, experiments that fired electrons at protons revealed that the latter contained point-like, electrically charged particles that we now call quarks. A proton has two up quarks and a down one. Quarks were later found to be bound together by particles called gluons.

We now know more about quarks and how far their electric field extends in space, which is sometimes called the radius of the proton. But we know less about gluons, which contain most of the mass of the proton in the form of energy, because they are chargeless, and so much harder to investigate. Seeing how they are distributed can tell us about how the proton’s mass is arranged and its structure.

Scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois have probed the proton’s gluons with particles called J/psi mesons. This is possible because even though gluons don’t have electric charge, they have a property called colour charge, which comes from the strong nuclear force, one of the universe’s four fundamental forces. J/psi mesons are made up of a charm quark and its antiquark, which also have colour charge and so are capable of interacting with gluons.

The researchers fired a beam of photons at liquid hydrogen, which is comprised mainly of just protons, and the photons interacted with the protons. These collisions produced short-lived J/psi mesons. By measuring how many of these were produced, the research team could calculate the proton’s mass distribution using quantum mechanical models that describe gluon-quark interactions.

Their results suggest that the gluons’ mass is confined to a dense core in the proton’s centre, while the charge from the quarks extends to a second, larger radius.

They also compared their results with predictions from another model of the proton, which agreed in some places and diverged at others, suggesting that the new figures need validating with more precise experiments or one that probe proton structure in a different way.

If it is confirmed, it will be a very interesting finding because it tells us something quite deep about how the proton’s constituents behave from a spatial point of view.

A different internal structure could have implications for calculating other proton properties, such as spin, angular momentum and energy distribution, which many sensitive experiments rely on. But some of the new proton findings rest on models used to calculate them, which haven’t proved entirely reliable in the past.

The results follow another revelation about the proton’s internal structure. Last year, a research team found that the proton can contain a much heavier charm quark, in addition to the three regular quarks, but asked: ‘Does the mass radius become larger or smaller?’

. Further understanding on quarks can be found:

Science Book: Physics

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Arts, Psychology, Research, Science

Psychology: Choice

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

The more alternatives, the more difficult the choice.

It goes without saying, that some choice is good and that more choice is even better. The freedom to choose lies at the heart of any democratic, equal and healthy society based on a free market, ranging from choices as important as to which school our children attend, who to vote for, to choices as mundane as to what to eat from the canteen menu, what to wear and which TV programme to watch this evening. The flipside of having choice is that we also have to take responsibility for the decisions we make – consequences may arise.

Various studies suggest that feeling that we can control our destiny is vital to our psychological well-being, and that limiting personal choice reduces well-being. There is no doubt that over the past 20 or 30 years we have been seduced by the power of choice, to the point that most of us take it for granted, and don’t really give it a second thought. Choice means we have freedom. It means we can express who we are as individuals and it’s central to our identity. Denying or restricting choice is considered something to be avoided at all costs. Choice is now central in every domain of our lives.

But is having greater and greater personal choice really better for us? Some psychologists believe not, and have shown in research that increased choice makes us unable to make decisions and reduces our well-being. Barry Schwartz, acknowledged world expert on the psychology of choice, states that the fact that some choice is good doesn’t necessarily mean that more choice is better. Schwartz refers to this as “the tyranny of choice”.

Four decades ago, sociologist Alvin Toffler described a psychological reaction to constant change and too much choice as “future shock”. He theorised that faced with too much choice – which he called “overchoice” – in too short a period of time, decisions would be harder and take longer to make as we’d have to process much more information. This would lead to slower reactions and decisions, and ultimately to psychological issues such as depression, distress and neurosis.

Recent research in psychology backs this up, suggesting that there are a number of problems associated with having too much choice. For example, in order to make a choice you’ll have to make some form of comparison between the different alternatives, which means sifting through an increasingly large amount of information about each one.

Some parts of the NHS appointments service in the UK utilises a “choose and book” system. Previously, in years gone by, patients would have gone directly to their local hospital; now there are pages of statistics from several hospitals within a 30-mile radius to wade through, including details on infection and mortality rates, car-parking availability and staff satisfaction rates. In situations like this, even if the majority of the available pieces of information are irrelevant to the choice you’re making, you still have to decide whether or not to take each one into account. It goes without saying that the volume and complexity of information you have to deal with increases the likelihood of making the “wrong” choice or making a mistake. In short, having too much choice causes you to worry, and is likely to lead to lower rather than higher well-being.

Findings from various experimental studies challenge the implicit assumption that having more options is better than having fewer. For example, shoppers are more likely to buy gourmet jams or chocolates and students are more likely to complete an optional class essay when they’re offered a limited array of six choices rather than an extensive array of 24–30 choices. What’s more, the shoppers reported greater subsequent satisfaction with their selections, and the students wrote better essays when their original set of choices was limited.

Psychology researchers conclude from these studies that having too much choice can have significantly demotivating effects. In relatively trivial contexts, not making a decision, such as going home without buying a pot of jam or a box of chocolates, is neither here nor there. More worryingly, choice overload may hinder decision-making in other more serious contexts, such as choosing medical treatment, especially where there are (or are perceived to be) costs associated with making the “wrong” choice, and where it takes the chooser a significant amount of time and effort to make an informed decision.

Are you a maximiser or a satisficer?

Back in the 1950s, Nobel prize-winning social scientist Herbert Simon introduced the distinction between maximising and “satisficing” as decision-making strategies. A maximiser is someone who wants to make the best possible choice, and so they complete an exhaustive study of all the available options before making their decision. A satisficer, on the other hand, is someone who is looking to make a “good enough” choice, so they keep looking at options only until they find one which meets their minimum requirements.

It’s unlikely you’re a 100 per cent maximiser or 100 per cent satisficer, although you’ll lean more towards one than the other. If you agree with statements such as “I never settle for second best,” and “Whenever I’m faced with a choice, I try to imagine what all the other possibilities are, even ones that aren’t present at the moment” you’re more likely to be a maximiser than a satisficer.

Although studies show that people who maximise tend to get better, higher-paying jobs than satisficers, at the same time they take longer to settle in and they’re more stressed, anxious and frustrated! Maximisers are also more prone than satisficers to be affected by social comparisons and have doubts about their ability compared to others.

. Science Book

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