Alzheimer's Disease

The NeuraMetrix passive digital biomarker looks promising for early detection  of Alzheimer's
forgetful old man being helped by woman to take his medication

Alzheimer’s disease requires early detection

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is one of the world’s biggest threats:
  • The number of people living with AD and other dementias affects more than 55 million people worldwide, a number which is projected to rise sharply - to an estimated 139 million by 2050 as populations age. 60-70 % of these develop AD. And 1/3 of seniors are dying from Alzheimer’s et. al. 
  • Beyond its devastating personal toll, dementia costs the global economy more than $1.3 trillion a year.
  • Currently, 98% of AD trials fail. We urgently need a passive signal that can detect early whether a clinical trial is on the path to failure.
  • AD develops very slowly - onset to diagnosis is typically 15-20 years. During this period, AD is undetected and, thus, untreated. Very early detection of the disease enables early treatment. This will also encourage the development of new medicines.
​​​​​​​AD is, among all the ailments that afflict humanity, perhaps the most terrifying: a disease that robs a person of their identity and disintegrates their relationships; for which there is no proven treatment or cure; and that can last for years, requiring enormous sums of money to ensure that many patients have specialized or round-the-clock care.

AD is the most common form of dementia that attacks neurons in the brain, resulting in memory loss, cognitive impairment, and behavioral changes. The disease disrupts the brain’s communication network, eventually destroying neuronal synapses and killing neurons.

People with one copy of the ApoE4 gene variant have two to four times as much risk of developing Alzheimer’s as people without the variant, and people with two copies of ApoE4 have about 10 times the risk. That risk appears to be larger in women. Carriers of ApoE4 also have a greater chance of developing symptoms at a younger age. About 25 percent of people have one copy of ApoE4; about 3 percent have two copies.​​​​

Outdated Traditional Tools, Delayed Treatment

Traditional Alzheimer’s diagnosis relies on a combination of cognitive testing, cerebrospinal fluid analysis through lumbar puncture, and brain imaging such as PET or MRI scans. While these tools can be effective in specialized clinical settings, they are often costly, invasive, time-consuming, and dependent on specialist assessment.

Blood-based biomarkers offer a less invasive alternative, but they also have important limitations. A blood test is essentially a snapshot of underlying pathology—not a continuous measure of how the brain is functioning. Current blood tests are primarily intended to support diagnosis in people with cognitive symptoms, while routine screening of asymptomatic people is not currently recommended. False positives, overdiagnosis, and uncertainty remain important concerns.

These limitations can contribute to delayed or missed diagnosis. An estimated 75% of dementia cases worldwide go undiagnosed, while 92% of people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) are not diagnosed at an early stage. PET scans, for example, can cost approximately $1,200–$10,900 in the United States, while lumbar punctures are invasive and burdensome for patients. Cognitive assessments require specialist involvement and can be subjective.

Alzheimer’s can also be difficult to distinguish from other forms of dementia, depression, or normal age-related changes. Taken together, the reliance on episodic diagnostic tools—including cognitive assessments, imaging, cerebrospinal fluid and blood biomarkers—means that clinicians often have limited visibility into how the brain is functioning and changing over time in a person’s everyday life. This creates an important gap between identifying underlying pathology and continuously measuring functional change.

The NeuraMetrix passive digital brain health biomarker offers a fundamentally different approach:

  • Measures function, not just imaging and pathology — captures changes in how the brain performs in everyday life.
  • Continuous rather than one-time — repeated measurements can reveal subtle changes and trajectories over time.
  • Passive and low burden — can collect data during normal computer use without cerebrospinal and blood draws, clinic visits or special tests.
  • Potentially detects change earlier — longitudinal behavioral changes may provide a signal before obvious cognitive symptoms emerge.
  • Measures real-world brain performance — rather than only whether an imaging or a biological marker associated with Alzheimer’s is present.
  • More useful for monitoring — repeated measurements could potentially track progression, treatment response and individual change.
Cerebrospinal fluid and blood biomarkers can tell you about Alzheimer’s-associated biology. The NeuraMetrix passive digital biomarker tells you how the brain is functioning—and whether that function is changing over time. The two approaches may ultimately be complementary rather than substitutes.

NeuraMetrix is being validated for Alzheimer's :

The NeuraMetrix TC digital biomarker was first validated for detecting and monitoring patients with Parkinson’s Disease and Huntington's disease. Based on these encouraging results, a research organization and NeuraMetrix completed a 3-year clinical study and are now combining the data to validate this passive digital biomarker for several other indications, including AD.
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"We can likely not defeat Alzheimer’s without this technology."


- Dr. Robert W. Mahley, M.D. Ph.D.
Senior Investigator, President Emeritus and Founder, Gladstone Institutes, Senior Investigator, Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease, Professor of Pathology and Medicine, University of California San Francisco, Chairman, NeuraMetrix’ Scientific Advisory Board
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"For the Brain Economy to deliver, cognitive testing and clinical trials both need to scale


- Álvaro Fernández, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of SharpBrains.
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