Dimitrios Kapogiannis, a neuroscientist at the National Institute of Aging and professor at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland is the lead author of a study on a new innovative technique that will allow doctors to identify Alzheimer’s disease as many as 10 years before symptoms appear.

The research was published on October 23 in the online issue of The FASEB Journal, The Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology and was presented to the public earlier in November at the 2014 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, DC.

The breakthrough that could revolutionize the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s involves a technique developed by the researchers for measuring brain insulin resistance in living patients. Insulin resistance in the brain is an indication of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This new blood test can accurately reflect development of AD up to 10 years prior to clinical onset, according to the study.

The blood test was performed on 174 patients with various degrees of neurological health. The researchers also had access to frozen blood samples from 20 of the AD patients that had been taken anywhere from 1-10 years prior to the diagnosis.

“We will need replication and validation, but I’m very optimistic this work will hold,” Dimitrios Kapogiannis said after the presentation of the research.