Blood tests to help clinicians improve the accuracy of a clinical diagnosis of dementia are highly desired as they are relatively inexpensive and widely available. Plasma levels of a protein called phosphorylated tau on amino acid position 217 (p-tau217) are now recognized as a highly accurate test to confirm the presence of amyloid deposits in the brains of living people with memory problems and are becoming a critical tool to help clinicians confirm a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). P-tau217 testing for AD is currently available in several countries, but not yet in Canada. Part of the requirement for Health Canada to approve p-tau217 testing in Canada will be to define the range of p-tau217 levels in the Canadian population. Defining the normative range of a test is an essential step in laboratory medicine. Over the past 9 years, we have partnered with Statistics Canada, which runs the Canadian Health Measures Survey, to generate normative ranges for other biomarkers relevant to AD. This effort is now completed for over 2500 samples from Canadians aged 3-79 years. Here, we propose to continue our partnership to generate Canadian normative data for p-tau217 as part of the data package to be reviewed by Health Canada to approve p-tau217 testing in Canada.
