Novel Biomarker Facilitates Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease

The method directed against the aggregated beta-amyloid, which is a protein complex believed to cause major nerve cell damage and dysfunction in AD, could also help development of drugs for the treatment of AD.

An international team of scientists, including those Lund University (Sweden) and also from Germany, and the USA, have used a novel method to quantify soluble variants of aggregated beta-amyloid (Aβ oligomers) in cerebrospinal fluid by flow cytometry. They analyzed the cerebrospinal fluid of 30 neurological patients, including 14 Alzheimer's patients. They found that patients had a more pronounced disease when they had greater number of Aβ oligomers in the cerebrospinal fluid.

The neuropathology of Alzheimer's disease has recently been linked to the neurotoxic Aβ oligomers. The crucial role of Aβ oligomers in the early events of AD is experimentally underlined. Several recent results suggest that those oligomers may cause the death of neurons and neurological dysfunctions relevant to memory. Furthermore Aβ oligomers levels are increased in brain and cerebrospinal fluid samples from people with Alzheimer's disease. This reflects the potential of Aβ oligomers as a marker for the early diagnosis of the disease.

The test might not only be used for the early detection of AD but can also be used when developing new and effective therapies for AD. A decline in the number of Aβ oligomers in cerebrospinal fluids could be a hint for the effectiveness of new drug therapies. Harald Hampel, MA, MD, MSc a professor at Frankfurt University (Germany) and lead investigator of the study said, "These samples provided from leading expert academic memory clinics in Germany and Sweden are of the best quality and are highly characterized in order to provide robust and reliable results on promising novel biomarker candidates." The study was published in the March 2012, issue of Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

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