Discriminant analysis to study trace elements in biomonitoring: an application on neurodegenerative diseases.

Quantification of 26 elements was performed in blood of patients affected by neurodegenerative pathologies, i.e., Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) and multiple sclerosis (MS), and of a control group to study the potential role of blood elements as markers for the different neurodegenerations. A multivariate discriminant analysis (stepwise method) was applied to determine the best set of variables to discriminate among subjects with different health status. Preliminary results show three classification functions of seven elements, namely Ca, Co, Cu, Fe, Ni, Pb and Zr.