The article reports:<p>"Dr Eric Karran, director of research at Alzheimer's Research UK, described the study as a 'technical tour de force'.<p>"However, he warned the current accuracy levels risked telling healthy people they were on course to develop Alzheimer's which may lead to anxiety and depression."<p>I just completed the Coursera online course in human behavior genetics. One of the ways that psychology research can contribute to the hoped-for future of genomic, personalized medicine is by figuring out how patients will react to various kinds of personal medical information about possible future outcomes. Today, there are some genetic tests for Mendelian (single-mutation) diseases that have a very high reliability, but many patients don't seek those tests, even if they have relatives who had the diseases, because there isn't much a patient can do about an incurable disease. People DON'T want to know that they are sure to die with a grave disease in the next twenty years. People would rather imagine that they just might live forever.<p>So if other studies replicate the result of the study reported here, and perhaps even further refine the accuracy of predicting Alzheimer disease risk from a simple blood test taken earlier in life, there will still be plenty of research to do on how to motivate patient behavior in<p>a) seeking the test,<p>b) acting on the results of the test in a rational way,<p>and<p>c) not piling up other health risks meanwhile.<p>And of course if this study finding eventually translates through further research into a deeper understanding of the cause of Alzheimer disease, leading to a prevention strategy or even a cure for that disease, that would be wonderful, but there are plenty of diseases that can be reliably diagnosed without being treatable or even preventable at all. This is a good step forward, but much work remains to be done to tackle Alzheimer disease and further prolong healthy lifespan for the patients at risk for that disease.