Researchers in the United States say they are close to developing a blood test that can predict the onset of Alzheimer's disease.
They showed that testing levels of 10 fats in the blood could predict very accurately the risk of the disease coming on in the next three years, the ABC reports.
Scientists from Georgetown University Medical Center studied 500 adults aged over 70 for five years.
Blood samples from 53 participants who developed dementia were compared to 53 cognitively well adults.
By looking at 10 bio-markers in the blood, doctors could predict with 90 percent accuracy whether people would develop Alzheimer's in three years.
Professor Howard Federoff says it's the first published report of a blood-based bio-marker test with very high accuracy.
The findings are published in the journal Nature Medicine.