Professor Kim Sang-yun of Seoul National University Bundang Hospital has become the first Asian physician to deliver a keynote speech at the Alzheimer Association International Conference (AAIC), held in Los Angeles from July-18.

In his address, titled "Alzheimer's disease blood-based biomarkers and AD control," Professor Kim said he had found a method to detect and diagnose only the toxic oligomer form of the beta-amyloid protein, a pathway of Alzheimer's disease, and use such means to control Alzheimer's disease before symptoms.

"The method can reduce the onset of Alzheimer's disease by preventing symptoms such as cognitive dysfunction and allow us to detect and deal with Alzheimer's disease, which accounts for 70 percent of the causes of dementia," Kim said, "Until now, pre-diagnosis and prevention Alzheimer's disease have been considered to be difficult."

With the development of the new test method, however, Alzheimer's disease, which can be temporarily suppressed but cannot be reversed, can now be diagnosed in the preclinical stage without showing symptoms, he added.

The test also only requires a simple blood test and does not use an expensive imaging device or makes the patients go through a painful process. Those benefits have also allowed the test method to receive a medical device manufacturing certification from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety after going through a clinical trial in April 2018.

"The test makes it possible to diagnose Alzheimer's disease at a stage where there are no symptoms present and proceed with prophylactic treatment so that memory impairment or cognitive impairment do not appear," Professor Kim said. "I predict that the paradigm of Alzheimer's disease treatment will change from the temporary symptom improvement to the suppressing the fundamental symptoms."