My Alzheimer's Journey
Part 140 - Update On The Bio-Hermes-002 study
I published an article January 26 about a study (Bio-Hermes) to determine if blood and digital biomarkers can reflect the presence of brain amyloid plaques. Today, I have an update on the study.
The Global Alzheimer’s Platform (GAP) recently announced the Bio-Hermes study has been successfully completed. What exactly does successfully completed mean?
The Bio-Hermes study had more than 1000 participants. The participants represented a diverse population, both ethnically and by health status:
24% percent of the participants were from traditionally underrepresented communities
400+ participants were considered healthy because they did not report any memory or thinking problems
300+ participants had MCI (Mild Cognitive Impairment)
270+ participants had early stage Alzheimer’s disease
The participants were given two blood and digital biomarker tests and one PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scan. The blood tests included the PrecivityAD test and the p-Tau217 test. Both tests are proven to be highly accurate in detecting Alzheimer’s disease pathology. The PrecivityAD test identifies amyloid plaques and the p-Tau217 test will identify both amyloid plaques and tau tangles.
The blood tests showed an Overall Percent Agreement (the proportion of total study participants where two or more tests agree) of 80.7% and a Positive Predictive Value (the probability that subjects with a positive screening test truly have the disease) of 90.1%.
In other words, the blood and digital biomarker tests accurately matched the PET scan results at a very high percentage of accuracy.
In case you have questions about the accuracy of the Bio-Hermes study, the researchers included 25 blood-based biomarkers, 15 digital tests (speech analytics, computerized cognitive assessment using adaptive psychophysics, and digital remote brain health screenings), and 4 cognitive tests (retinal imaging, PET Central Reader, statistical analysis, and artificial intelligence).
The positive results of the Bio-Hermes study is a significant step forward for early Alzheimer’s disease screening and for researchers.
Siemens Healthineers has joined the Bio-Hermes program to take its capabilities to the next level. Siemens is now a licensed partner of the study, aiming to enhance Alzheimer’s diagnostics. Several other leading biotech and pharmaceutical companies are also joining the Bio-Hermes program. The names of the other companies have not been announced.
These companies and universities participated in and supported the initial Bio-Hermes study:
AbbVie
Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF)
Aural Analytics
C2N
Cognivue
EMTherapro
Gates Ventures
GNS Healthcare
IXICO
Lilly
Linus
Merck
Pentara
Quanterix
Retispec
Roche
SomaLogic
University of Gothenburg
My guess is that you will see many of the above organizations becoming official partners of the study.
I will continue to follow the Bio-Hermes program.
SOURCE: Interchangeability of blood-based biomarkers and PET to identify Alzheimer’s disease pathology
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