A major new study aimed at identifying blood tests that could help diagnose dementia more accurately and quickly than current methods has begun recruiting patients from January 2025.
The Real Word Dementia Outcomes (READ-OUT) study will investigate blood tests that have shown promise in research studies but aren’t used routinely in dementia diagnosis. It will test how accurate and reliable these blood tests are for different groups of people, giving the researchers an idea of how the blood tests perform in the ‘real world’.
Led by Professer Vanessa Raymont, the research team at Dementias Platform UK (DPUK) are based at the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge. Alongside the ADAPT trial, READ-OUT is part of the Blood Biomarker Challenge – a multi-million-pound programme supported by Alzheimer’s Society, Alzheimer’s Research UK, National Institute for Health and Care Research, Gates Ventures and players of People’s Postcode Lottery.
The first volunteers for READ-OUT have now been recruited from the Warneford Hospital in Oxford. Ultimately the study team aims to enrol over 3,000 people from 28 NHS memory clinics and community buses across the UK.
The team will assess multiple new and existing blood tests, looking at a range of dementia types including Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, frontotemporal dementia, and dementia with Lewy bodies. The researchers will also look at whether the blood tests can help detect these diseases at various stages and if the results need to be interpreted differently in people from different ethnic backgrounds or with other health conditions such as kidney disease.