Ten proteins in one blood sample flagged ALS with 98% accuracy — a long, anxious wait for answers may get shorter

ALS, the disease that gradually takes away people's ability to move, is notoriously hard to pin down: there is no single test, and families often wait many months while doctors rule out other conditions one by one. Researchers at Emory University in the USA may have found a shortcut in an ordinary blood sample. Measuring more than 300 proteins at once, they picked out a pattern of just ten that, in a separate check group of 144 people with ALS and 37 without, identified the disease with 98.3% accuracy — clearly better than the best single marker used today, which scored 89.9%. The pattern even caught some patients the single marker missed, including people with only mild disability, who are often the hardest to diagnose. The study, published in Nature Communications, is a research finding, not yet a clinic-ready test — the team now plans to check it in larger and more varied groups.

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