Neurodegenerative disease biomarkers: Guideposts for disease prevention through early diagnosis and intervention

Abstract

This special issue of Progress in Neurobiology entitled “Biomarkers for Neurodegenerative Disorders” is a biomarker tour de force as a result of the heroic efforts of the experts in research on chemical and neuroimaging biomarkers of neurodegenerative disorders and related diseases who have contributed superb overviews for this very timely volume. The conditions covered in this special issue range from aging related neurodegenerative diseases that now are epidemic such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD), the most common neurodegenerative dementia and movement disorder, respectively, to less common conditions like frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and vascular dementia (VaD). Notably, the incidence and prevalence of these disorders are on the rise due to worldwide demographic trends that are leading to rapidly aging populations across the globe (Khachaturian et al., 2009; The Alzheimer’s Study Group Report, 2008; Trojanowski et al., 2010a,b; Plassman et al., 2007; Hurd et al., 2007; Wimo and Prince, 2010). Moreover, it is becoming increasingly clear that the hallmark lesions of PD, such as alpha-synuclein inclusions known as Lewy bodies, and those shared by ALS and FTLD such as TDP-43 pathology, co-occur in AD thereby rendering insights into biomarkers of PD, ALS and FTLD equally relevant to developing informative biomarkers for the onset and progression of AD (see Table 1). Further, the clinical and pathological overlap of AD with PD, ALS and FTLD make it attractive to be able to monitor biomarker evidence for the presence of AD pathology in the brains of patients with these other disorders. In addition, this special issue also includes chapters on biomarkers for schizophrenia, affective disorders and multiple sclerosis because the editors of this special issue and the authors of the chapters here envision many opportunities for advances in biomarker research in each of these areas of neuropsychiatric disease research to cross fertilize and stimulate progress in other areas of biomarker research including research on neurodegenerative disease biomarkers.