A large cross-sectional survey of 572 adults conducted in the United States, examining attitudes towards Alzheimer’s disease blood-based biomarkers (BBB) testing, has been published in the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia. The survey was distributed to participants in three ongoing clinical trial or cohort studies (the C3 observation cohort study, the MidCog study and the LitCog study), who had various medical conditions, and who had agreed to participate in future research endeavours. The survey was completed digitally, before starting, participants were provided with brief information about BBMs and their potential use in the primary care setting. The survey posed questions about the following categories: awareness and attitudes, facilitators and barriers to testing, and anticipated impact of receiving positive results.
In terms of awareness and attitudes, the survey reported that: 1) most people were unfamiliar with BBB tests (83.7% indicated unfamiliarity; 2) very few people had undertaken a BBB test in real life (n=10, 1.8%); 3) most considered it ‘very important’ to offer BBB tests in the context of memory or thinking problems (76.8%); 85% would be willing to undergo testing if recommended by their primary care provider. Interestingly, fewer people (60.4%) felt it was very important to offer BBB tests to ‘any adult aged over 65 years’. In the category facilitators and barriers, the most endorsed facilitators were informed care (94.2%), insurance cover (88.5%) comprehensive education (88.5%) and ease of use (88.1%); common barriers were costs (49.3%), concerns about stigma (24.2%), and fear of a positive result (21.7%). When it came to anticipating impact, 87% indicated they would be likely to take steps to improve brain health, and 70% anticipated emotional distress. The authors also performed bivariate and multivariate analyses to determine which factors might influence a person’s response, they found that age, presence of multimorbidity, health literacy and ethnicity did seem to alter perspectives.
The authors concluded that most people are willing to have BBB testing in the primary care setting, however barriers and facilitators to undergoing testing, and response to receiving results, were influenced by factors like age, ethnicity and health literacy. Some of these factors could be overcome (for example, providing more information to support health literacy), other would require greater levels of innovations and enhanced resources.
More information on this study is available here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41983466/
