In the future, Alzheimer’s disease could be diagnosed long before the first symptoms appear. As researchers from the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (Empa) have shown, certain protein fibers in the cerebrospinal fluid are a clear indicator of Alzheimer’s disease.
According to Empa, it was already known that certain proteins in the cerebrospinal fluid can be used to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. However, current methods of detecting these “biomarkers” through biochemical tests can only determine the presence and quantity of the suspect proteins.
The new study by Empa researchers in the journal “Communications Biology” now proves that these proteins look different depending on whether patients suffer from Alzheimer’s dementia, have only mild cognitive impairments or are not yet experiencing any symptoms.
The longer the fibers, the more severe the disease.
“While people only found short protein fibers about 100 nanometers long in the early stages of the disease, much larger fibers several micrometers long appeared in the later stages of the disease,” said biophysicist Peter Nirmalraj in the EMPA statement.
On the other hand, samples from healthy people did not contain, or only contained a few particularly short fibers. The longer the fibers, the more severe the disease.
After this pilot study with 33 participants, the researchers now want to carry out further studies with larger groups of patients.
Service: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-04606-7