Blood Biomarkers in Neurodegenerative Diseases: Implications for the Clinical Neurologist
Daniel Alcolea1, Michal Schnaider Beeri2, Julio C Rojas2
1From the Sant Pau Memory Unit (D.A., A.L.), Department of Neurology, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, IIB SANT PAU, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red en Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (D.A., A.L.), CIBERNED, Madrid, Spain; Department of Psychiatry (M.S.B.), Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY; The Joseph Sagol Neuroscience (M.S.B., R.C.G.), Center Sheba Medical Center, Tel-Hashomer, Israel; and Department of Neurology (J.C.R.), Weill Institute for Neurosciences, UCSF Memory and Aging Center, San Francisco, CA. alleo@santpau.cat dalcolea@santpau.cat.
Abstract:
Blood-based biomarkers offer a major advance in the clinical evaluation of neurodegenerative diseases. Currently, research studies have reported robust assays of blood markers for the detection of amyloid and tau pathologies specific to Alzheimer disease (amyloid-β peptides, and p-tau) and nonspecific blood markers of neuronal (neurofilament light, β-synuclein, and ubiquitin-C-terminal-hydrolase-L1) and glial degeneration (glial fibrillary acidic protein) that can measure key pathophysiologic processes in several neurodegenerative diseases. In the near future, these markers may be used for screening, diagnosis, or disease and treatment response monitoring. Blood-based biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases have been rapidly implemented in research, and they have the potential to enter clinical use soon in different clinical settings. In this review, we will describe the main developments and their potential implications for the general neurologist.
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