About one in 10 people in the UK aged 70 and over may have brain changes linked to Alzheimer’s disease, according to a large new population-based study.
The findings are not a diagnosis but suggest more than 1 million older people could meet NHS criteria for anti-amyloid treatments, far higher than previous estimates of 70,000. Researchers analysed blood samples from nearly 11,500 randomly selected people using a p-tau217 biomarker test that can detect Alzheimer’s-related changes early.
Published in Nature, the study found these changes become more common with age, rising from under 8% in people in their 50s and 60s to about two-thirds of those over 90. Experts say the results could transform early detection, though current treatments remain costly and are not widely available on the NHS.
