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Headlines 15 “I'm really excited because my grandma has donated to the Neurological Foundation for years. She was so pleased that in a roundabout way she ended up supporting her own granddaughter.” Dr Barrett-Young will lead a study, alongside Professor Richie Poulton at the University of Otago looking at whether a simple blood test could detect early Alzheimer’s disease. She will use blood samples already collected for the Dunedin Study, giving the research a significant head-start. The Dunedin Study has followed the lives of 1037 babies born between 1 April 1972 and 31March 1973 at Queen Mary Maternity Hospital in Dunedin. Around 900 blood samples were taken from study members at age 45, which will be screened using highly sensitive immunoassay technology to identify the presence of the pTau181 biomarker, a likely predictor of Alzheimer’s disease. “This technology has only become recently available in New Zealand thanks to the efforts of our collaborators in Auckland, Drs Erin Cawston and Brigid Ryan. This opens new opportunities to examine questions here in Aotearoa that we weren’t able to look at before.” “The beauty of the Dunedin Study means we also have a wealth of data about these people from across their lives. It could tell us things like whether people who are at increased risk of Alzheimer's disease are likely to have other health conditions come up.” None of the participants have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, which is not unusual at age 45, although early-onset Alzheimer’s can affect people from age 30. The study’s focus is to provide valuable information about early signs of the disease. “Any early notification that you're at increased risk or might be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s could really help people focus on prevention and delaying the progress of the disease. And you won’t have to go sit in an MRI machine or go through a lumbar puncture – you just get a blood test,” Dr Barrett-Young says. “Not everyone will want to know if they are going to develop Alzheimer’s, but having that knowledge could be truly life-changing for some people.” Dr Barrett-Young came to neurological research in an unconventional way, starting with a degree in English literature, before working as a business analyst, then returning to university for a psychology paper. “It was just for fun, but studying psychology sparked my interest in the brain, which turned into a PhD and now I'm doing research. I really love it, I’m fascinated by the brain, and I’m honoured to be doing something that could potentially improve people’s lives.” A blood test for Alzheimer's? Dr Ashleigh Barrett-Young couldn’t wait to tell her grandmother the good news when she received a grant for Alzheimer’s research.