Routine blood chemistry screen: a diagnostic aid for Alzheimer's disease

Results of blood chemistry screens of 47 Alzheimer's disease patients were compared to those of 71 non-Alzheimer's disease patients with other dementias. Only kidney-related tests differed between the groups (urea nitrogen, creatinine, uric acid and albumin) with the Alzheimer's disease patients nearer the normal ranges. Multivariate analyses were used to examine whether the simultaneous use of the analytes could aid in diagnosing Alzheimer's disease. Linear and quadratic discriminant analysis and logistic regression were used to evaluate a number of models. A linear discriminant model of albumin, uric acid, lactate dehydrogenase, and age demonstrated 70-75% classification accuracy using randomly selected test populations of 20%.