Finding new ways to identify people who develop Alzheimer’s disease is a key step on the Holy Grail trail to prevent the affliction. And now yet another means of doing so has been discovered - a spinal fluid test that is apparently 100 percent accurate in identifying patients who have significant memory loss and are developing Alzheimer’s, according to a study in the Archives of Neurology (read the abstract).

Such biomarkers, of course, should make it easier for clinical research to accelerate. People who have undergone spinal fluid tests can be enrolled in studies that are run to better solicit information about those who are developing symptoms and, later, to track the progress of drugs that are being developed to treat or prevent Alzheimer’s. The study included more than 300 patients in their 70s - 114 with normal memories, 200 with memory problems and 102 with Alzheimer’s. Spinal fluid was analyzed for the amyloid beta and tau proteins.

And 90 percent of those with Alzheimer’s had spinal fluid with protein levels, while 72 percent with mild cognitive impairment also exhibited spinal fluid with protein levels. Most of those patients developed Alzheimer’s within five years, The New York Times notes. Meanwhile, 36 percent of those with normal cognitive functioning had Alzheimer’s-like protein levels in their spinal fluid, suggesting they will later develop memory problems.

Interestingly, the finding comes just one month after new diagnostic guidelines were proposed at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, which proposed using brain scans to detect the disease before patients have developed any obvious memory problems or other symptoms. Given that spinal fluid tests are available commercially - and such technologies as PET scans are not - there may be a rush to early diagnosis long before any drugs are available. As John Trojanowski, a University of Pennsylvania researcher and senior author of the new study, tells the paper: “How early do you want to label people?”