Abstract
Context: There is no valid biomarker for severity of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) available until now.
Objective: Therefore, we investigated 1H-NMR spectroscopy for specific resonances as biomarkers for severity of AD.
Materials and methods: Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of patients with diagnosed AD and healthy control subjects was analysed by one-dimensional water-suppressed 1H-NMR spectroscopy. The resonances were correlated with the cognitive performance of the patients and controls.
Results: Specific 1H-NMR resonances showed higher intensities in AD patients than in control subjects. Mini-mental-state-exam scores correlated with 1H-NMR resonances in AD patients.
Discussion and conclusion: 1H-NMR resonances of CSF are obviously valid biomarker for severity of AD, despite the lack of knowledge of the underlying molecular structure. Successful isolation and identification of these substances will most likely provide details to the pathophysiology of AD.
Acknowledgments
The authors kindly thank the Network of Competence in Dementia of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Berlin, Germany) for providing some of the liquor samples analysed in this study and Brigitte Schlegel from the Leibnitz Institute for Molecular Pharmacology (Berlin, Germany) for her help with obtaining the 1H-NMR spectra.
Declaration of interest
Funding was provided by the German Federal Ministry of Economics (Bundeswirtschaftsministerium, KF2027802AJ9) and the Sonnenfeld-Foundation (Sonnenfeld-Stiftung).