A study into Alzheimer’s disease, completed by researchers in the BRC’s Dementia Theme, has found that data gathered from online cognition testing correlates to protein blood biomarker levels associated with the disease.

The development of new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease has highlighted the need for better cognitive testing to identify people who would benefit from earlier interventions for the disease. Traditional face-to-face neuropsychological assessments can only detect cognitive changes several years after the build-up of the proteins that cause Alzheimer’s disease, meaning that treatment is given at a later stage when symptoms of the disease may have progressed.

The study found that the levels of these proteins were related to the degree of cognitive impairment, measured on a new online cognitive testing platform Oxford Cognitive Testing Portal (OCTAL), developed by the Cognitive Neurology Research Group at the University of Oxford.

The study’s findings have been published in Alzheimer’s Association, titled “Relationship of plasma biomarkers to digital cognitive tests in Alzheimer’s disease”. The article details the range of cognitive testing tasks undertaken by participants using OCTAL and how the results participants with Alzheimer’s disease scored significantly worse that participants without the disease.