Unexpected Wild Card.

10 AI startups to watch in 2024.

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1. Scientists have made another major stride toward the long-sought goal of diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease with a simple blood test. On Sunday, a team of researchers reported that a blood test was significantly more accurate than doctors’ interpretation of cognitive tests and CT scans in signaling the condition. The study, published Sunday in the journal JAMA, found that about 90 percent of the time the blood test correctly identified whether patients with memory problems had Alzheimer’s. Dementia specialists using standard methods that did not include expensive PET scans or invasive spinal taps were accurate 73 percent of the time, while primary care doctors using those methods got it right only 61 percent of the time. “Not too long ago measuring pathology in the brain of a living human was considered just impossible,” said Dr. Jason Karlawish, a co-director of the Penn Memory Center at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the research. “This study adds to the revolution that has occurred in our ability to measure what’s going on in the brain of living humans.” (Sources: nytimes.com, jamanetwork.com)

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2. The latest shingles vaccine may delay or possibly even prevent the onset of dementia more effectively than an older version. Being vaccinated against shingles has been linked to dementia protection before. Now, it seems that a vaccine called Shingrix, which has been available since 2017, reduces the risk of developing the condition in the next six years by 17 per cent more than an older vaccine called Zostavax. Shingles occurs when the varicella-zoster virus, which causes chickenpox and stays in the body, becomes reactivated at a time when the immune system is weakened, such as when someone is stressed or having chemotherapy. This results in a painful rash, which can sometimes get infected or scar. (Source: newscientist.com)

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