Esther Oh, MD

Oral Glucose Tolerance Test For Alzheimer's Disease Biomarker Development

Measuring amyloid levels in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) may be a useful way to identify people who have Alzheimer's disease but is difficult to obtain because the procedure is invasive. A much less invasive method - a simple blood test - has not been shown to consistently link blood amyloid levels with levels of cognitive function and disease stage. The goal of Dr. Oh's research is to modify the amyloid blood test so that it may be able to determine whether someone has early forms of Alzheimer's disease (AD) or predict who may develop the disease among individuals who have certain forms of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Dr. Oh will confirm and extend earlier results that have shown that a simple oral glucose tolerance test that has been shown to produce short term increases in the blood levels of a particularly toxic form of amyloid, is not so altered in patients with AD and MCI. Moreover, she will seek evidence of a proposed mechanism for how this occurs, one that is thought to involve changes in the release of a substance that can modulate the action of insulin. Since many cases of AD are diagnosed at more advanced stages, the diagnostic blood test, which could predict the likelihood of a person developing AD years in advance, could allow clinicians greater opportunity to intervene when drug therapy is likelier to be more effective. Also, since many treatments are targeted at lowering or clearing the amyloid proteins from the brain, this modified amyloid blood test might provide a means of monitoring the effects of treatment.