Abstract
Enriching brain DHA is believed to be beneficial for the prevention and treatment of several neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease. An impediment in assessing the effectiveness of the treatments is the lack of a reliable biomarker for brain DHA. The commonly used erythrocyte omega-3 index is not suitable for brain because of the involvement of unique transporter at the blood brain barrier (BBB). We recently showed that dietary lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC)-DHA significantly increases brain DHA, which results in increase of brain BDNF. Since there is bidirectional transport of BDNF through the BBB, we tested the hypothesis that plasma BDNF may be used as biomarker for brain DHA enrichment. We altered the brain DHA in rats and mice over a wide range using different dietary carriers of DHA, and the correlations between the increase in brain omega-3 index with the increases in plasma BDNF and the erythrocyte index were determined. Whereas the increase in brain omega-3 index positively correlated with the increase in plasma BDNF, it negatively correlated with the erythrocyte index. These results show that the plasma BDNF is more reliable than the erythrocyte index as biomarker for assessing the effectiveness of omega-3 supplements in improving brain function.
Highlights
Enriching brain docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is believed to be beneficial for the prevention and treatment of several neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease
Since DHA is known to increase the synthesis of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in the b rain[26,27], and since there is a bidirectional transport of BDNF through the blood brain barrier (BBB)[28], we investigated whether the increase in plasma BDNF can be used as a functional biomarker for the increase in brain DHA
These results show that plasma BDNF level is a more reliable biomarker for the brain DHA levels compared to the erythrocyte omega-3 fatty acid (FA)
Summary
Enriching brain DHA is believed to be beneficial for the prevention and treatment of several neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease. We altered the brain DHA in rats and mice over a wide range using different dietary carriers of DHA, and the correlations between the increase in brain omega-3 index with the increases in plasma BDNF and the erythrocyte index were determined. E pidemiologic[4] and pre-clinical s tudies[5,6,7,8] show beneficial effects of dietary omega-3 FA in the prevention and management of these diseases Nutritional supplements such as fish oil are widely used in order to increase brain DHA with a hope to prevent these diseases or mitigate their effects. The erythrocyte omega-3 FA levels were negatively correlated with the brain DHA levels, they correlated positively with the increase in adipose tissue and heart These results show that plasma BDNF level is a more reliable biomarker for the brain DHA levels compared to the erythrocyte omega-3 FA
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