CSF Biomarkers

Abstract

A review. With an ever growing population of aged individuals who are at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD), there is an urgent need for a sensitive, specific and preferably non-invasive diagnostic std. of disease progression. Diagnosis of AD is still largely based on exclusion criteria of secondary causes and other forms of dementia with similar clin. pictures, than the diagnostic accuracy of AD is low. Recent research focused the attention to biochem. diagnostic markers (biomarkers) as they are very important indicators of normal and abnormal biol. processes. Mol. aberrations in the AD brain are reflected in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) where three candidate biomarkers have recently been identified: total tau protein, amyloid β-protein 1-42 and tau protein phosphorylated at AD-specific epitopes. The sensitivity and specificity of these data are able for discrimination of AD patients from controls. Here, we review the recent literature on biochem. biomarkers and discuss their predictive value as indicative for disease vulnerability to detect individuals at risk for AD and to det. the clin. efficacy of novel, disease-modifying strategies. According to the literature anal. reported in the present review, we can conclude that the combination of the CSF biomarkers and their ratios may significantly increase the specificity and the accuracy of AD diagnosis. [on SciFinder(R)]