Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, Goethe-University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Prog Neurobiol. 2013 Feb-Mar;101-102:1-17. doi: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2012.06.007. Epub 2012 Jun 26.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most important cause of dementia in the elderly. The molecular alterations preceding this neurodegenerative pathology may take place even 20 years before its clinical appearance. In this context, the discovery of biomarkers in biological fluids enabling an early presymptomatic diagnosis as well as discrimination from other types of dementia is eagerly awaited. In particular, since the traditional markers obtained both from cerebrospinal fluid inspection and neuroimaging approaches have not achieved a broad clinical application, research efforts have been focused on the development and validation of biomarkers in blood. The benefit of searching for blood-based candidate biomarkers is evident due to the easiness and non-invasiveness nature of blood samples collection compared with any other body fluid. As a result, blood may constitute a rich source of disease biomarkers. Interestingly, among the technological platforms used to perform research into the biomarker discovery arena, proteomics has attained more recent consideration. In the present review, we provide a comprehensive assessment of patterns of biomarkers detected in plasma and serum specimens for the diagnosis of AD by employing proteomic approaches. Currently, growing evidence suggests that blood protein signatures are helpful to increase the likelihood of successful diagnosis of AD. Accordingly, this area of research promises to yield exciting results in the next future.
阿尔茨海默病（AD）是老年人痴呆症的最重要原因。这种神经退行性病理发生之前的分子改变甚至可能在其临床出现前 20 年就发生了。在这种情况下，人们急切地期待在生物液中发现能够进行早期无症状诊断并与其他类型痴呆症区分开来的生物标志物。特别是，由于从脑脊液检查和神经影像学方法获得的传统标志物尚未实现广泛的临床应用，因此研究工作的重点一直集中在开发和验证血液中的生物标志物上。与任何其他体液相比，由于血液样本采集的简便性和非侵入性，寻找基于血液的候选生物标志物的好处是显而易见的。因此，血液可能是疾病生物标志物的丰富来源。有趣的是，在用于进行生物标志物发现研究的技术平台中，蛋白质组学最近得到了更多的关注。在本综述中，我们通过蛋白质组学方法对用于 AD 诊断的血浆和血清标本中检测到的生物标志物模式进行了全面评估。目前，越来越多的证据表明，血液蛋白特征有助于提高 AD 成功诊断的可能性。因此，这一研究领域有望在未来取得令人兴奋的成果。
