Malerba Francesca, Florio Rita, Arisi Ivan, Zecca Chiara, Dell'Abate Maria Teresa, Logroscino Giancarlo, Cattaneo Antonino
Fondazione European Brain Research Institute (EBRI) Rita Levi-Montalcini, Rome, Italy.
Institute of Translational Pharmacology - National Research Council (IFT-CNR), Rome, Italy.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2024 Jan 25;15:1298307. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2023.1298307. eCollection 2023.
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is an extremely heterogeneous and complex neurodegenerative disease, exhibiting different phenotypes, genetic backgrounds, and pathological states. Due to these characteristics, and to the fact that clinical symptoms overlap with those of other neurodegenerative diseases or psychiatric disorders, the diagnosis based only on the clinical evaluation is very difficult. The currently used biomarkers help in the clinical diagnosis, but are insufficient and do not cover all the clinical needs.
By the means of a new immunoassay, we have measured and analyzed the proNGF levels in 43 cerebrospinal fluids (CSF) from FTD patients, and compared the results to those obtained in CSF from 84 Alzheimer's disease (AD), 15 subjective memory complaints (SMC) and 13 control subjects.
A statistically significant difference between proNGF levels in FTD compared to AD, SMC and controls subjects was found. The statistical models reveal that proNGF determination increases the accuracy of FTD diagnosis, if added to the clinically validated CSF biomarkers.
These results suggest that proNGF could be included in a panel of biomarkers to improve the FTD diagnosis.
额颞叶痴呆（FTD）是一种极其异质性和复杂性的神经退行性疾病，表现出不同的表型、遗传背景和病理状态。由于这些特征，以及临床症状与其他神经退行性疾病或精神障碍的症状重叠这一事实，仅基于临床评估进行诊断非常困难。目前使用的生物标志物有助于临床诊断，但并不充分，无法满足所有临床需求。
通过一种新的免疫测定方法，我们测量并分析了43例FTD患者脑脊液（CSF）中的前体神经生长因子（proNGF）水平，并将结果与84例阿尔茨海默病（AD）、15例主观记忆障碍（SMC）患者的脑脊液以及13例对照受试者的脑脊液结果进行比较。
发现FTD患者脑脊液中的proNGF水平与AD、SMC患者及对照受试者相比存在统计学显著差异。统计模型显示，如果将proNGF测定添加到经过临床验证的脑脊液生物标志物中，可提高FTD诊断的准确性。
这些结果表明，proNGF可纳入生物标志物组合中以改善FTD诊断。
