Evaluation of a plasma protein panel as a compound biomarker for Alzheimers disease

阿尔茨海默病？S病是老年人最常见、危害最大的疾病之一。随着人口老龄化，已经超过癌症和心脏病总和的成本将大幅上升。在了解疾病发病机制方面正在取得进展，今年报告了第一批疾病修改试验。然而，尽管取得了这些进展，阿尔茨海默病？S仍然很难在早期阶段得到诊断，无法预测，甚至很难监测疾病的进展，并受到日常变化和其他误差来源的影响。克服这些问题的一种方法是使用测试或生物标记物。许多正在开发中的此类测试依赖于能否获得复杂的脑部扫描或脊髓液。我们采取了另一种方法来寻找基于血液的生物标记物。在过去的五年里，我们实验室的研究揭示了一组在阿尔茨海默病患者、S患者和其他老年人之间不同的标志物。我们现在建议将这些进一步发展为一项测试，然后在大量人身上试验这项测试。我们将通过这种方式来确定，这些蛋白质是否一起或单独地作为阿尔茨海默病的测试？S病，用于早期诊断，预测痴呆或监测疾病进展。如果他们做到了，而且到目前为止的证据是有希望的，那么这有可能大幅提高诊断水平，并使治疗阿尔茨海默氏症的药物试验更快、更准确地执行S的任务。

Alzheimer?s disease is one of the most common and devastating of diseases of the elderly. As the population ages then the costs, already larger than cancer and heart disease combined, are set to rise substantially. Progress is being made in understanding the disease pathogenesis with the first disease modifying trials being reported this year. However, despite this progress, Alzheimer?s remains difficult to diagnose in the early stages, impossible to predict and even monitoring disease progression is difficult and subject to day to day variation and other sources of error. One way of overcoming these problems is the use of tests or biomarkers. Many such tests in development are dependent on access to sophisticated brain scanning or spinal fluid. We have taken an alternative approach in seeking blood based biomarkers. Studies in our laboratories over the past five years have revealed a set of markers that differ between Alzheimer?s patients and other elderly people. We propose now to develop these further into a test and then to trial this test on a large number of people. We will determine in this way, whether these proteins, together or separately, do function as a test in Alzheimer?s disease either for early diagnosis, for prediction of dementia or for monitoring disease progression. If they do, and the evidence so far is promising, then this has the potential to substantially improve diagnosis and to make trials of drugs for Alzheimer?s faster and more accurate to perform.