Noratest®
is an innovative tool
for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease from a simple blood test.

I am 55 years of age or older

I feel alerting symtoms

I speak with my doctor

To guide his diagnosis, your doctor will conduct an initial cognitive assessment with you using a test called the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). If he or she deems it necessary, he or she may prescribe Noratest®, a simple blood test that will allow you to obtain a quick and reliable assessment of your cognitive health.

I have an MMSE score

I have a prescription for Noratest

I do the test in a laboratory

Follow the blood collection conditions explained in the Noratest®'s instructions. Then go to one of our partner medical biology laboratory with your prescription. Upon receipt of your results, consult your doctor for interpretation.

Where can I take the test?

A long and complex diagnosis

Today, Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis is a combination of several clinical and paraclinical exams (medical imaging, lumbar puncture), making the patient's journey complex, long and expensive. For the patient, it involves numerous consultations and a waiting time sometimes up to 6 months for a diagnostic conclusion.

Noratest®, a simple and quick analysis

With Noratest®, we make it possible for each of our patients and for the physicians, all across the country, to benefit from a simple, clear and effective diagnostic tool. Noratest® enables the physicians to gain insight when they suspect the onset of Alzheimer's disease in a patient with characterized cognitive disorders.

Know better, plan better

Alzheimer's disease is frightening as it is often not well understood. Yet, it is a disease one can live with! Patients live with the disease for many years before becoming dependent. What we know today is that adapted and personalized care, from the onset of the very first symptoms, is the best way to slow down the progression of the disease.

Data for good

We believe that "big data" technologies can serve the public interest and contribute to a positive societal impact. Noratest® is based on the dosage of blood neurotransmitters interpreted by a powerful algorithm. By putting data in the service of life and opening up the diagnosis to the greatest number of people, we are contributing at our level to advancing research on Alzheimer's disease.

A CE marked in vitro diagnostic medical device software

Noratest® is an in vitro diagnostic medical device software that calculates a score for Alzheimer's disease based on the plasma concentrations of three catecholamines (adrenaline, noradrenaline, dopamine), as well as clinical and demographic parameters. The calculation is performed by an algorithm, based on a mathematical model developed by the company.

What we observe…

The Locus Coeruleus (LC) is an area of the brain that is believed to be impacted early during Alzheimer's disease.^1–3 This region includes most of the noradrenergic neurons of the brain, which project their extensions towards several brain regions involved in particular in the phenomena of memory and spatial orientation.⁴ Starting at an early stage, the density of these neurons has been shown to decrease progressively during the disease.⁵ Today, the emerging hypothesis is that Alzheimer's disease is actually preceded by overactivation of the LC area even before the first symptoms of the disease are visible.⁶

Olivieri, P. et al. Ann Clin Transl Neurol 6, 1345–1351 (2019).
Theofilas, P. et al. Alzheimers Dement 13, 236–246 (2017).
Ghosh, A. et al. Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy 11, 59 (2019).
Satoh, A. & Iijima, K. M. Brain Res. 1702, 17–28 (2019).
Kelly, S. C. et al. Acta Neuropathol Commun 5, 8 (2017).
Ross, J. A. et al. Prog. Neuropsychopharmacol. Biol. Psychiatry 85, 136–151 (2018).

Why do we measure plasma catecholamines in our Alzheimer's disease diagnosis?

Overactivation of noradrenaline receptors in the cortex is believed to stimulate the formation of amyloid plaques in this region.⁷ The loss of cortical neurons due to inflammatory phenomena would result in the reduction of neuronal cortical stimulation of the LC, meaning the degeneration of noradrenergic neurons.

This phenomenon would explain the noradrenaline concentration decrease observed post-mortem inside the cortex of patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease. A correlation between the MMSE score of Alzheimer's patients and the concentration of noradrenaline in a brain cortical region has already been observed.^8–10 A deregulation of noradrenaline concentration has also been observed in the Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) of some patients.^11,12

Ross, J. A. et al. Neurobiol Stress 2, 73–84 (2015).
Adolfsson, R. et al. The British Journal of Psychiatry 135, 216–223 (1979).
Vermeiren, Y. et al. Neurobiology of Aging 35, 2691–2700 (2014).
Vermeiren, Y. et al. J. Alzheimers Dis. 41, 819–833 (2014).
Elrod, R. et al. Am J Psychiatry 154, 25–30 (1997).
Raskind, M. A. Archives of General Psychiatry 41, 343 (1984).

Multifactorial score

Noratest® is based on a mathematical scoring model built according to physiopathological phenomena observed during several clinical studies carried out with the Lariboisière, Saint-Louis, Fernand Widal and Saint-Eloi University hospitals. These studies highlighted correlations between plasma catecholamines concentrations, Alzheimer's patients cognitive MMSE scores and CSF biomarkers. The methods used to calculate the Noratest® score rely on these results.

In addition to the three plasma catecholamines concentrations and the MMSE score, the algorithm also takes into account the age and sex of the patients, which are known parameters involved in the prevalence of the disease.^13,14 Thus, the mathematical model provides a rapid and simple means of identifying among patients with memory impairment those whose pathological cause is AD.

Ferretti, M. T. et al. Nat Rev Neurol 14, 457–469 (2018).
Guerreiro, R. et al. Genome Med 7, 106 (2015).

Noratest® is an innovative tool for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease from a simple blood test.