Samaritan gets grant for Alzheimer's blood test
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
Samaritan Pharmaceuticals and Georgetown University, are to develop a simple blood test for predicting Alzheimer's disease using a $188,000 grant from the US National Institutes of Health. The test will be based on detecting the detecting the increase of the hormone dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). Researchers from the Las Vegas, Nevada firm's Samaritan Research Laboratories, at Georgetown University, recently discovered a potential correlation between DHEA precursor levels in blood plasma, and Alzheimer's disease. Using the new funds, researchers plan to differentiate between the levels of DHEA precursor in the plasma of patients with and without the disease, and to define the relationship between the levels of DHEA precursor, in plasma, and Alzheimer's.