A new kind of fake news. It’s true, but it’s not news.

Recently there was a rush to the microphones because of a new story about blood tests for dementia. The headlines screamed that there are proteins in blood that can predict Dementia fifteen years before diagnosis. Immediately I was summoned to explain the importance of this in front of microphones, and on the telephone to journalists.

The spoiler alert for you is my conclusion that this news was very interesting to me as a dementia anorak, but because it makes little difference to people affected by dementia it is of no interest to the general public. That’s not what the headlines and the news stories appeared to say. They suggested that this was a “breakthrough” in a tone that may have made some people think that there was half a chance of getting a treatment or cure any time soon.

Much was made of the simplicity of plasma protein analysis. The research suggested that during regular hospital visits or health checks, someone could have a routine blood test that would predict whether or not they were going to have dementia in the next 15 years. They even said it was better than a lumbar puncture.

Speaking as a person who has had a lumbar puncture, virtually anything on this earth is better than a lumbar puncture, so that’s not much of an enticement. It’s awfully useful if you are desperately ill, but not something you would ever want to think of as part of a routine test. And it is not often used for detection of dementia, so why the parallel with a blood test was drawn beats me.

It’s a funny mixture of messages when they resort to weighing up routine blood tests against routine lumbar punctures.  The reader might infer that any of us have a routine lumbar puncture, which is obviously nonsense. In fact, accessing routine testing of any kind is often avoided in the NHS in the UK where a person really only goes to the doctor or the hospital when they actually have present need rather than speculation about what might happen in fifteen years. Especially now that we are experiencing a crisis in funding and staffing.

Casting around for any kind of story in this welter of opinions, one journalist asked me about whether people would actually want to know about the risk of a dread condition in fifteen years’ time. I told them that we already know who has a risk of dementia in fifteen years’ time.  It includes those of us who are already very old, those who smoke, who drink alcohol to excess, who don’t exercise, who don’t eat a balanced diet, and who have had a head injury. If you add in those who have not had much formal education and anyone with blood pressure problems, or diabetes, you’re getting close to a full list. Don’t forget people who won’t wear their hearing aids, or with untreated depression and single men with no children.

If any of those people at risk went for this new blood test and came back with a result suggesting they might get dementia within the next 15 years, the response might be “No shit, Sherlock”, or any less vulgar phrase to express the view that someone has spent a syringe and some lab time to establish a vague prediction that is already evident from a lifestyle questionnaire.   But if that list of risks is news to them there’s probably still time to delay the onset of dementia or slow it down and it’s not too late to do something serious about it (except the bit about getting married and having children…that might be too late and the evidence isn’t as strong for that as it is for avoiding head banging so don’t rush into anything.)

Anyway, for fellow anoraks if you are still reading, you will have noted that the key protein hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, amyloid and tau, were not included in the analysis and no one has checked how these proteins would affect the prediction model.  So, fundamentally, nothing to see here yet.