Alzheimer disease: from biomarkers to diagnosis

The discovery of biomarkers, considered as surrogate markers of the underlying pathological changes, led an international work group (IWG) to propose a new conceptual framework for AD in 2007 Dubois et al. (2007). According to the IWG, AD is now defined as a dual clinico-biological entity that can be recognized in vivo, prior to the onset of the dementia syndrome, on the basis of: i) a specific core clinical phenotype comprised of an amnestic syndrome of the hippocampal type and ii) supportive evidence from biomarkers reflecting the location or the nature of Alzheimer-type changes. Therefore, AD is diagnosed with the same criteria throughout all symptomatic phases of the disease based on the biologically-based approach to diagnosis independent of clinical expression of disease severity. The definitions were further clarified in 2010 (Dubois et al., 2010). Although the new criteria are proposed for research purposes, we encourage expert centres with adequate resources to begin to use the proposed algorithm in order to move the field forward and facilitate translation into clinical practice.