The new P-tau 217 test is almost here

[Brian4]

Julie, a belated thanks for getting a very helpful answer from the people at Neurocode!

I will talk to my contacts at LabCorp to see what they have to say. I'll report back when I hear from them.

Best,
Brian

[Kathleen1]

I am still ambivalent about getting the p-tau 217 test this year. If I got a good result --which I do not expect being 73 and 3/4--I would likely become more of a slacker in the exercise I need to be doing. Also it looks like the 800$ panel from Apollo health would be the one I would get-- and then at some point repeat--so this becomes a budget item of importance. Prioritizing this quarters expenditures, I bought a good set of headphones to keep me on exercycle longer and will keep reading everyone's updates on this matter. I really appreciate the information and am grateful to those who share their progress. I am especially grateful for Julie's leadership here.

[SusanJ]

Here's something to consider if you are going to test tau and other markers.

Researchers suggest standardizing blood sampling times to improve the accuracy of diagnosing and tracking Alzheimer’s. This finding opens new avenues for understanding how daily rhythms influence brain health.

Key Facts:

- Alzheimer’s biomarkers, such as p-tau217, fluctuate based on the time of day.
- Biomarker levels were lowest in the morning and peaked in the evening.
- Standardizing the time of day for blood tests could improve diagnosis accuracy.

https://neurosciencenews.com/aheimers-b ... ime-27759/

[Kathleen1]

Thanks SusanJ. I read the article (Open source, Nature, Translational Psychiatry 14, Article number:373 (2024) ). When I looked at the figures the affected folks P-tau 217 values looked to be easily above the cutoffs compared to unaffected regardless of time of day, so as a one-off screen the test is probably valid right now. However the time of day variation was enough that if you are looking at treatment effects of exercise, supplements, meds you might falsely think you have made a difference, when all that happened was you got an early morning lab instead of a late afternoon test. This is surely important if you are using changes in P-tau 217 values as a followup tool for any treatment protocol. Anyway, I am leaning closer and closer to getting the test, mainly for family info, as my spouse (whom I was counting to captain the ship as needed in the next decade) is going to undergo heart surgery and the offspring (who have been amazingly confident about our competence) need to be alert and judgmental about our money, driving and other management activities.