Spectrometry Identifies Biomarkers for Dementia

Researchers seeking new biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases have assembled a panel of proteins that can differentiate between normal people and sufferers of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, or dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) with 95% accuracy.

Investigators at the University of Washington (Seattle, USA) used the sophisticated stable isotope iTRAQ (isobaric tagging for relative and absolute protein quantification) system in conjunction with multidimensional chromatography, followed by tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS), to simultaneously measure relative changes in the protein composition of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) obtained from patients with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and DLB compared to healthy controls.

They reported in the August 2006 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease that after analyzing more than 1,500 CSF proteins they had identified eight unique protein markers that were capable of distinguishing Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and DLB patients from each other as well as from controls with high sensitivity at 95% specificity.

"We are getting very close to being able to use these biomarkers for the clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, and dementia with Lewy bodies,” said senior author, Dr. Jing Zhang, associate professor of pathology at the University of Washington. "This is a major improvement on other biomarker detection techniques.”



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