A protein in the blood can be used to predict Alzheimer’s disease before the first clinical symptoms appear, researchers have reported.
Scientists at the German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research (HIH) and the University Hospital Tuebingen, working with an international team, say the discovery of the blood marker opens up the possibility of new therapies.
Although recent studies have led to tests on amyloid proteins, which accumulate in the brain, this research focused on neurodegeneration.
Mathias Jucker, a senior researcher at the DZNE’s Tuebingen site and at the HIH, and his team showed that a neurofilament, which is resistant to degradation, both accumulates in the blood long before the onset of clinical symptoms and that it reflects the course of the disease very sensitively, enabling prediction on future developments.
The study, which is published in the latest edition of Nature Medicine, is based on data and samples from 405 individuals who were analysed within the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN), an international research collaboration.
The research team monitored the development of neurofilament concentration in the samples and found that there were noticeable changes in the blood up to 16 years before the calculated onset of dementia symptoms.
"It is not the absolute neurofilament concentration, but its temporal evolution, which is meaningful and allows predictions about the future progression of the disease," said Jucker.
Further investigations showed that changes in neurofilament concentration reflect neuronal degradation accurately and allow predictions on how brain damage will develop.
While the rate of change in neurofilament concentration was found to be closely linked to brain degradation, correlation with the deposition of toxic amyloid proteins was far less pronounced, which suggests neuronal degradation occurs independently.
Preische O, Schultz SA, Apel A, et al. Serum neurofilament dynamics predicts neurodegeneration and clinical progression in presymptomatic Alzheimer’s Disease. Nature Medicine 21 January 2019; doi: 10.1038/s41591-018-0304-3
Leave a Reply