Paris, 26 May 2026 – A new pathway is opening up in the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Patients with documented cognitive impairment can now undergo a reliable blood test (pTau217) to help determine whether their symptoms are due to Alzheimer’s disease or another cause. This test enables the effective referral of relevant patients toward confirmatory invasive procedures and helps alleviate the bottleneck in the diagnostic pathway for this condition, which represents an increasingly pressing public health challenge.

In France, an estimated 1 million people are living with this neurodegenerative disease¹, with approximately 225,000 new cases each year. Yet one in two patients (53%) remains undiagnosed or misdiagnosed², even though early diagnosis - from the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease - is key to accessing a care pathway that can help slow the its progression.

“Every earlier diagnosis means a better supported care pathway, more appropriate patient orientation and more informed medical decisions. Our commitment is to harness medical biology to support physicians in detecting Alzheimer’s patients earlier.” Aurélie Driss Corbin, Managing Director of Cerba Specialties.

A robust diagnostic pathway that remains difficult to access

The current diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is based on several steps: detection of early signs by a physician, routine blood tests and neurocognitive assessments carried out by specialists (neurologists, geriatricians and neuropsychologists), together with MRI. Where diagnostic uncertainty remains, a further examination is required. In most cases, this involves a lumbar puncture to analyse cerebrospinal fluid, a demanding and invasive exploratory procedure performed by a specialist physician.

Although robust, this pathway faces considerable delays in access to care, which can lead to a diagnostic odyssey. Waiting times for neurocognitive assessments in memory centres range from three months to one year depending on the region. This situation is expected to worsen as the population ages: the number of people over 85 is projected to double by 2050, reaching 5 million.

pTau217, a blood-based biomarker specific to the Alzheimer’s process and key to an effective diagnostic orientation test

Against this backdrop, the blood-based biomarker pTau217 represents a major advance, making it possible, through a simple blood sample, to identify patients who should undergo confirmatory diagnostic testing.

pTau217 is the most effective blood-based biomarker currently available. It offers higher discriminative accuracy than pTau181 (AUC ~0.90–0.96 for pTau217 vs ~0.75–0.90 for pTau181). In addition, the increase in plasma concentrations is more pronounced for pTau217 than for pTau181 in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease compared with healthy subjects. Finally, pTau217 shows a stronger correlation with both amyloid burden as measured by PET scan and cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers.

In the academic field, Professor Sylvain Lehmann’s team at Montpellier University Hospital was among the pioneers in the scientific validation of the pTau217 assay. Today, Cerba, Europe’s largest specialty medical biology laboratory, is the first private player to support the scaling up of this innovation by mobilising its human, technical and material resources for reliable, accessible deployment across France.

At this stage, the blood test does not replace confirmatory examinations, but provides a powerful, reliable and easy-to-implement diagnostic orientation tool. It helps ensure that patients are more effectively directed towards the specialist examinations they genuinely need, reducing unnecessary use of invasive procedures such as lumbar puncture and helping to relieve pressure on specialist centres.

This test is intended exclusively for patients presenting with cognitive impairment documented during a specialist assessment. It is not intended for screening asymptomatic individuals.

Aligned with national priorities

This innovation is aligned with the priorities of France’s National Neurodegenerative Diseases Strategy 2025–2030, which places prevention and early diagnosis at the heart of its approach.

It also responds to the challenges faced by physicians, including limited consultation time, still limited training on these conditions and a sense of fatalism linked to the absence of curative treatment, against a backdrop of significant saturation in memory consultations, private specialists and CMRRs*.

For patients, this test can reduce waiting times and facilitate access to a key diagnostic step, including in areas with fewer specialist resources. Early diagnosis also enables non-drug care and interdisciplinary support to be put in place sooner, helping to slow the effects of the disease and preserve patients’ cognitive functions for as long as possible. This is a major issue, as diagnosis determines access to medical and social support and to clinical trials. Once therapeutic treatments are authorised in France, the test will also help identify patients eligible for these medicines.

For the healthcare system, the test helps optimise specialist resources, reduce waiting times and lower the cost of systematic additional examinations that may prove unnecessary.

¹ According to Fondation Vaincre Alzheimer, 2015

² According to Santé gouv , 2015

* Memory Resource and Research Centre.

Press release

About Cerba HealthCare:

Cerba HealthCare, a leading player in medical biology, aims to support the evolution of healthcare systems towards more prevention. Drawing on nearly 60 years of expertise in medical biology, the Group helps better assess the risk of disease development, screen and diagnose conditions earlier, and optimise treatment effectiveness through personalisation.

Every day, across five continents, the Group’s 15,000 employees support the transformation of medicine, driven by one deeply held conviction: advancing diagnosis means advancing health.

Press contacts:

Priscilla Simonnet – +33 6 31 90 28 80 – communication@cerbahealthcare.com

Madeleine Clayeux – +33 6 70 32 13 89 – cerbahealthcarepresse@havas.com