A research team in Belgium discovered a new test that has proven successful at identifying patients that are developing Alzheimer’s disease, according to a report published in the Archives of Neurology on Tuesday.

The study took spinal fluid from patients with varying levels of cognitive memory and looked for a specific protein signature or biomarker that has been attributed to Alzheimer’s.

Researchers tested more than 300 seniors—some with the disease, some suffering with recall difficulty, and some with no sign of Alzheimer’s. The study proved that 90 percent of the patients already diagnosed with the disease had the particular protein characteristic. Seventy-two percent of patients with some memory problems tested positive for the protein, and only 32 percent of patients in the normal cognition group had the biomarker.

Even more fascinating were the results of a second test of deceased patients confirmed to have Alzheimer’s. In that study, 64 out of 68 patients tested positive for the protein.

Healthcare professionals hope that the test can be used to detect Alzheimer’s way before the disease takes hold. Presently, the only way physicians can prove that a patient has the disease is post-mortem, making it very hard to isolate and treat it. Instead, doctors diagnose the disease through process of elimination—not the most reassuring method.

The downside to the test is that the spinal tap used to capture the fluid is notoriously painful, so it’s doubtful that healthy adults would elect to undergo the procedure—especially if insurance doesn’t cover it. There is also a fear of depression due to early detection or a false positive. The fact is, there are no medicines on the market to stop or slow the disease, so treatment—at this time—is fairly futile.

For the pharma industry, the new test could help researchers isolate trial participants by those most likely to have the disease, rather than test a broad range of people with cognitive problems, many of which might not have Alzheimer’s.

“We have to go very early to patients who have just the beginnings of Alzheimer’s in their brains—those are the people we need to identify to test the treatments,” Stephen Ferris at New York University’s Alzheimer’s Disease Center told CBS News. “That’s why these spinal fluid tests are going to be extremely important over the next few years.”

It makes for interesting reading. Some of the medicines exceeded predicted use. These include the Z-drugs in insomnia, varenicline (Pfizer’s Chantix) for smoking cessation, entecavir (Baraclude, BMS) in chronic hepatitis C infection, ezetimibe (Zetia, Merck) in lowering cholesterol and hormonal therapies in breast cancer, and a handful of different drugs for treating osteoporosis.

Interestingly, the four Alzheimer’s disease treatments that have been the subject of so much litigation over access in the past couple of years were also prescribed more often than expected.

Conversely, several drugs were used less than had been predicted. Among these were the antibodies omalizumab (Xolair, Roche/Novartis) in asthma and natalizumab (Tysabri, Elan/Biogen Idec) in multiple sclerosis, drotecogin alfa (Xigris, Lilly) in sepsis, riluzole (Rilutek, Sanofi-aventis) in motor neurone disease, and the three antiobesity treatments orlistat (Xenical, Roche plus GSK’s otc Alli), sibutramine (Reductil, Abbott) and the now-withdrawn rimonabant (Acomplia, Sanofi-aventis).

The statistics were welcomed by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, but criticized the report because of the way some of the figures had been calculated – it thinks some of the predictions were too low in the first place. In addition, current data collection methods are unable to pinpoint what indication a medicine is being prescribed for, which can also skew results.

The group accepted that the data they were working with were not perfect, and that for future annual reports it hopes to improve data collection and reporting, and also include more drugs in the analysis. In particular, it says it needs to glean drug utilisation data from other sources, such as clinical networks or the industry.

Its director general, Richard Barker, said that ABPI would be the first to applaud if more patients were getting the medicines NICE has approved in most disease areas, but it wants these statistics to be compared with uptake in other European countries.

“Enthusiasm over the results is tempered by the knowledge that not only are there other medicines being prescribed less than predicted but also, even where uptake is generally good, there are still areas of the country where postcode prescribing is alive and well,” he said. “It is essential that the way of calculating the “predicted” use of medicine is as robust as possible.”