Alzheimer’s disease and blood-based biomarkers – potential contexts of use

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an irreversible, incurable, progressive neurodegenerative illness, where dementia symptoms gradually worsen over a number of years. The research of validated biomarkers for AD is essential to improve diagnosis and accelerate the development of new therapies. Biochemical markers including neuroimaging could facilitate diagnosis, predict AD progression from a pre-AD state of mild cognitive impairment, and be used to detect the efficacies of disease-modifying therapies. Established biomarkers of AD from cerebrospinal fluid and neuroimaging are highly accurate, but barriers to clinical implementation exist. The focus on blood-based AD biomarkers has grown exponentially during the past few decades. An ideal diagnostic test for AD should be noninvasive and easily applicable. Clinical cost-effectiveness also needs to be established.

Keywords:

• biomarker
• Alzheimer’s disease
• neurodegeneration
• cerebrospinal fluid
• beta amyloid
• tau protein

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the projects “Novel blood-based biomarkers for early diagnosis, prognosis and progress of Alzheimer’s disease” (GA ČR no 17-05292S, Czech Republic) and “Neuropsychiatric aspects of neurodegenerative disorders” (Progres Q27/LF1) provided by Charles University in Prague.

Disclosure

The author reports no conflicts of interest in this work.