Thursday, January 18, 2018

Urine test for early Alzheimer’s may be on the horizon

Urine test for early Alzheimer’s

A joint study by Philadelphia’s Monell Chemical Sense Center and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) suggests the possibility of detecting early stages of Alzheimer’s disease from the odor signature of urine. Although the study was done on mice and a lot of work needs to be done, researchers are hopeful the findings will lead to a non-invasive urine test that diagnoses the neurodegenerative disease before it finds time to do too much damage to the brain.

Dr. Bruce Kimball, an author of the study, and a chemical ecologist with the USDA NWRC, said before this study they focused mostly on alterations in body smell caused by elements that derive outside the body, for example viruses and vaccines.


Dr. Kimball said the findings may be useful for other neurologic diseases as well, since they now know that odor signatures of the urine can be changed by alterations in the brain typical of Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer's is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that slowly destroys memory and cognitive skills, and eventually the ability to carry out simplest tasks. It is the most common form of dementia, accounting for about 60-70% of all dementia cases.

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Alzheimer’s has been recently ranked as the third leading cause of death in the United States. An estimated 5.3 million Americans have Alzheimer’s.

Around 800,000 people in the UK are affected by Alzheimer’s disease.

Although, the exact cause of the disease is not known, AlFuois Alzheimer, the German psychiatrist who described the disease, identified two hallmarks of the disease – abnormal quantities of protein (amyloid plaques) and fibers (tau tangles) in the brain.


Urine test for early Alzheimer’s


While there is no way to reverse or stop the progression of this dreaded disease yet, an early and accurate diagnosis would provide patients and their caregivers time to plan and the healthcare professionals time to discover a treatment to ease the symptoms.


For their study, the researchers worked with mice that artificially developed amyloid plaques in their brains same as the ones found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. For the breeding process, scientists inserted human genes into the genomes of the mice then used drugs to activate them. The mutations in the genes cause the brain cells of the mice to produce excessive amyloid precursor protein.

These types of mice are known as APP (amyloid precursor protein transgenic) mice. These mice similar behavioral symptoms of mental deterioration.

In the modified mice brain, the amyloid plaques clog the brain in a similar way that is observed in humans with Alzheimer’s disease.


The researchers used three different strains of APP mice. After using behavioral and chemical analysis, the team discovered that each strain of these APP mice had specific urine smell signatures that were noticeably different from those mice in the control group.

The odor changes were not the result of new compounds being created in the body, but instead were changes in concentrations of normal urinary compounds.

The odor differences between control mice and those with Alzheimer's predated detectable quantities of plaque accumulation in the APP mice brains. Further studies revealed that the definite odor profiles could be used to pinpoint APP mice against control mice.


Coauthor of the study Dr. Daniel Wesson, of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said while this study is at the proof-of-concept stage, biomarkers to identify early-stage Alzheimer’s may someday be pinpointed by identifying distinctive odor signatures.


The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

2 comments:

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