Abstract
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that accounts for the majority of dementia cases. While research over the past decades has made advances into understanding disease pathology, definite AD diagnosis currently relies on confirmation by autopsy. The anticipated dramatic rise in affected individuals over the next decades necessitates the development of diagnostic tests applicable to living individuals, which depends on identification of disease biomarkers. Diagnostics based on blood protein biomarkers are particularly desired since these would allow for economical, rapid and non-invasive analysis of individual biomarker profiles. Research is actively ongoing in this field and has led to the identification of autoantibodies and various proteins in the blood that may represent a disease-specific blood signature of AD. This review provides an overview on the progress in the field of identification of AD-specific blood protein biomarkers.
Highlights
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive cognitive decline that generally afflicts people over the age of 65, a form of the disease known as familial early-onset AD can affect people as early as in their forties
The presence of amyloid beta (Aβ) plaques and neurofibrillary tangles composed of hyperphosphorylated tau protein present in brains of affected individuals comprise the hallmark pathology of AD [6]
The Aβ peptide is generated by cleavage of the amyloid precursor protein yielding fragments varying from 37 to 42 amino acids in length, of which the 42-amino-acid version in particular is associated with AD due to its tendency to form plaques [7]
Summary
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive cognitive decline that generally afflicts people over the age of 65, a form of the disease known as familial early-onset AD can affect people as early as in their forties. An example of this approach was a 2007 study by WyssCoray and coworkers using a filter-based arrayed ELISA to measure the levels of 120 known signaling proteins in the plasma of 259 AD and age-matched control samples [31].
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