| Popis: |
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia with no adequate therapies and no tests that would enable accurate diagnosis of AD during lifetime. The aim of this work was to evaluate the levels of Abeta42, total-tau (t-tau), phospho181-tau (P181-tau) in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and/or CSF t-tau/Abeta42 ratio as an early biomarker(s) of Alzheimer's disease. In this pilot study we analyzed CSF samples of clinically assesed AD individuals (N=12, mean age=73 years), healthy age-matched individuals (N=13, mean age=63 years) and demented patients with no certain diagnosis (N=11, mean age= 69 years). The levels of Abeta42, t-tau and P181-tau in CSF were determined using ELISA assay. Our results show that CSF-Abeta42 levels and CSF t-tau/Abeta42 ratio give 75% and 100% specificity of detecting AD cases, respectively, suggesting that the two biomarkers may be used for early and differential diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. In agreement with previous study by Fagan et al. (2007) we found low CSF-Abeta42 levels ( 476 pg/mL) and high CSF t-tau/Abeta42 ratio ( 0.744) to be characteristic for AD cases. Among 12 clinically diagnosed AD individuals we identified three non-AD cases, while 64% (7/11) of demented individuals with no certain diagnosis were detected to have AD by the CSF analysis. Interestingly, two cases of AD were found in the age-matched control group, indicating that this test may detect non-demented and/or mildly cognitively impaired cases (MCIs) who will develop Alzheimer's disease. In summary, our pilot study supports CSF-Abeta42 and CSF t-tau/Abeta42 levels as early biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease. |
