On August 19 the FDA cleared two blood tests for Alzheimer's on the same day — including the one I wrote to you about in July, when it was still just a study. I should have told you three weeks ago. Today, the part most coverage skips: who these tests are for, and what to say if that's someone in your family.
Today: what "cleared" really means and how to ask for one, the Part D number CMS just published for 2027, a blueberry recall that's still sitting in freezers, a webinar worth a calendar note if someone you love lives in a facility, and a woman in Georgia who turned 112 on Saturday.
📰 The Big Story
Two Alzheimer's Blood Tests Were Cleared on the Same Day
On August 19, 2026, the FDA cleared PrecivityAD2, made by C2N Diagnostics, and Roche's Elecsys pTau217 — the same day, though some coverage puts them four days apart, which is the gap between the two companies' press releases, not the FDA's decisions. They join Fujirebio's Lumipulse from May 2025 and Roche's earlier pTau181 from that October.
None of these is a screening test, and that is the whole ballgame. The FDA rule defining this category describes it as being for "a patient presenting with cognitive impairment and being evaluated for" Alzheimer's and other causes of cognitive decline. PrecivityAD2's cleared instructions say it plainly: "The test is not intended as a screening or stand-alone diagnostic test." If your memory is fine and you would simply like to know, there is no cleared blood test for you. That is not a technicality — it is the whole indication.
If symptoms are being evaluated, the age floors differ: PrecivityAD2 is cleared for adults 40 and older, Roche's pTau217 for 55 and older. Both are prescription-only, and both are meant to be read alongside the rest of the picture, never alone.
"Cleared" is not "approved." These went through FDA's 510(k) route, meaning the agency agreed each is substantially equivalent to a test already on the market. That is a real review, and a lighter bar than the approval the FDA reserves for high-risk devices or a new drug. The two words get used interchangeably. They aren't.
What the study everyone quotes actually found. The number in circulation is "65% to 93%." That is not the test's accuracy. In the research presented at AAIC in July, primary care physicians' own diagnostic accuracy rose from 65% before they saw a blood test result to 93% after. The test made the doctors better. That's a different, and frankly more interesting, claim.
If this is about someone in your family, here is the actual move. The test is ordered by a doctor, not requested at a lab, and the appointment it belongs in is the one where the memory problem is the reason for the visit — not an aside at the end of a physical. The sentence that opens the door: "She's been repeating herself for a few months. I'd like that evaluated, and I want to know whether a blood test is appropriate." If the answer is no, it is worth knowing that "no" usually means the cleared test isn't purchasable yet, or the practice doesn't run it, or there's no coverage decision — not that nothing is wrong. Ask which of those it is.
Can you get one? Partly, and here I have to be careful. Roche says clinicians have access to its pTau217 test now, on the 4,500-plus cobas lab instruments already sitting in U.S. labs. The FDA-cleared PrecivityAD2 is not on sale yet — C2N expects it later this year, and an older lab version remains available. On cost: Medicare has published no coverage decision for either test that I could find, and C2N publishes no price at all, though it does describe payment plans and financial assistance. The one payer policy I could confirm covers PrecivityAD2 only — Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield begins covering it October 1 for eligible members; if you're on an Anthem plan, ask whether yours is included. So if a doctor orders one, ask what it will cost you before it is drawn.
🔍 On Your Radar
💊 Part D's 2027 number is out, and the cushion is gone
For two years a CMS demonstration quietly held down standalone drug-plan premiums — $15 off a month in 2025, $10 in 2026, plus a ceiling on how much any plan could raise your premium year to year. All of it ends with 2026. The published 2027 base beneficiary premium is $41.33, up $2.34 from $38.99, which is exactly the 6% the Inflation Reduction Act allows. Don't do arithmetic on your own bill with it, though: that base figure is a statutory starting point, not what anyone pays. The number that will actually hit you is the cushion disappearing, and you'll see it plan by plan when CMS posts the 2027 landscape in mid-to-late September.
🫐 That blueberry recall is still in freezers
Seventeen people have been sickened by E. coli O145:H28 traced to frozen blueberries, six hospitalized, none killed. The illnesses are in two states, Florida and Georgia; the product went to 19. The recall expanded on September 2, and the best-by date runs to February 9, 2028, so this is not last summer's news. Look for Great Value Organic Triple Berry Blend, 10 oz, lot code 6040 01-6; Publix pulled all lots of four GreenWise organic blueberry and mixed-berry items. FDA's advice for the rest of us covers the realistic case: if you've already dumped a bag into a freezer container and can't tell, throw it out.
🗳️ If someone you love votes from a nursing home
The midterms are coming, and a resident of a long-term care facility may need help to register, reach the polls, or get a ballot back. Consumer Voice is holding a webinar on exactly that — Thursday, September 17, 3:00–4:00 p.m. ET, watchable from home, aimed at families, facility staff and ombudsmen. Nina Kohn, a law professor at Syracuse and elder-law scholar at Yale, presents with Consumer Voice's Lori Smetanka and Jocelyn Bogdan. If you've wondered who is supposed to make this work for your mother, this is the hour that answers it.
📚 From the Archives
Senior Cohousing: What It Is and Why It's Growing — Victoria Sinclair
Three items up there are about systems changing under you. This one is about a choice made on purpose, which is why I'm sending you here this week and not to another piece about Medicare mail.
Cohousing is private homes around shared common space — your own front door and kitchen, plus a communal one where people cook together a few nights a week. A garden, walking paths, neighbors who are close on purpose rather than by accident of address. Victoria counted roughly 170 such communities in the country, and a great many people who have never heard the word.
The piece opens at an HOA meeting where somebody floats the idea and a man in a vest says it sounds like a commune. The reply is the best line in our archive: "It's not a commune, Hal. Nobody's sharing a toothbrush."
If you've ever wondered what the next place looks like — for you, or for a parent living alone ninety minutes away — this is the option most people don't know is on the menu.
☕ Slice of Life
Mabel Dunbar turned 112 on Saturday.
She was born in Jamaica on September 5, 1914, five weeks into the First World War. She moved to Fayetteville, Georgia last August to live with her granddaughter and grandson-in-law. Mother of one, grandmother of four, great-grandmother.
Asked for her secret, per FOX 5 Atlanta, she gave an answer with nothing to buy: "God is love and I love my families."
One hundred and twelve years, and the whole thing fits in eight words.
Until next Tuesday, Nino
P.S. Have you asked a doctor about a memory blood test — or are you sitting on the question, wondering whether it's even worth bringing up? Either way, hit reply and tell me where you're stuck. I'll answer you personally. I read every reply.
