Alzheimer's, Dementia & Mental Health
Protein-Based Biomarkers in Blood Serum Identify
Individuals with Alzheimer's Disease
Identification of blood-based biomarker profiles
with good diagnostic accuracy would have a profound impact worldwide
Sept. 13, 2010 - Researchers correctly identified
80 percent of the people in their study as having Alzheimer’s disease by
the use of a blood test, but when they added clinical information their
efficiency jumped to 94 percent, according to their report in the
September issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives
journals.
This appears to be a big step forward in the quest
to identify Alzheimer’s early, when treatment may be more effective.
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Alzheimer's, Dementia & Mental Health |
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"There is clearly a need for reliable and valid
diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease, and in
recent years, there has been an explosive increase of effort aimed at
identifying such markers," the authors write as background information
in the article.
"It has been previously argued that, because of
significant advantages, the ideal biomarkers would be gleaned from
peripheral blood."
Identifying biomarkers in the blood has several
advantages over other methods of classifying patients with Alzheimer's
disease, including detecting biomarkers in the cerebrospinal fluid and
neuroimaging. Blood can be collected at any clinic or in-home visit and
most patients will agree to the process, whereas not all facilities can
conduct lumbar punctures to obtain cerebrospinal fluid.
Also, many older patients may not consent to lumbar
puncture and may not be able to undergo neuroimaging because of
pacemakers or other health issues.
Proteins in the serum of 197 patients diagnosed
with Alzheimer's disease and 203 people without Alzheimer's disease were
analyzed by Sid E. O'Bryant, Ph.D., of Texas Tech University Health
Sciences Center, Lubbock, and colleagues in the Texas Alzheimer's
Research Consortium
Statistical analyses were used to create a
biomarker risk score, which included levels of a number of protein
biomarkers, including fibrinogen (a clotting protein), interleukin-10
(associated with the immune system) and C-reactive protein (an
inflammatory marker).
The final biomarker risk score correctly identified
80 percent of the individuals with Alzheimer's disease and accurately
excluded 91 percent of the individuals without Alzheimer's disease.
When other factors were also considered - age, sex,
education and whether an individual had the APOE gene, which is
associated with risk for Alzheimer's disease - the score correctly
identified 94 percent of the individuals with Alzheimer's disease and
accurately classified 84 percent of participants who did not have the
disease.
"In addition to offering more accessible, rapid and
cost- and time-effective methods for assessment, biomarkers (or panels
of biomarkers) also hold great potential for the identification of
endophenotypes within Alzheimer's disease populations that are
associated with particular disease mechanisms," the authors write.
In the current study, "a disproportionate number of
inflammatory and vascular markers were weighted most heavily in the
analyses." The findings provide support for the existence of an
inflammatory subtype of Alzheimer's disease, they note.
"The identification of blood-based biomarker
profiles with good diagnostic accuracy would have a profound impact
worldwide and requires further validation," the authors conclude.
“With the rapidly evolving technology and the
analytic techniques available, Alzheimer's disease researchers now have
the tools to simultaneously analyze exponentially more information from
a host of modalities, which is likely going to be necessary to
understand this very complex disease."
This study was made possible by the Texas
Alzheimer's Research Consortium funded by the State of Texas through the
Texas Council on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders.
Investigators at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at
Dallas also acknowledge support from a University of Texas Southwestern
Alzheimer's Disease Center National Institutes of Health, National
Institute on Aging grant.
