engleski

Croatian project on early detection of Alzheimer´s disease : Preliminary findings

This large-scale 3-year project (2012-2014) is designed to determine the diagnostic accuracy of potentially useful biological markers for discrimination among subjects with Alzheimer's disease (AD), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), non-demented healthy controls (HC), and patients with other primary causes of dementia. Preliminary findings obtained on 69 AD, 41 MCI, and 10 HC cases will be presented. As AD and other less prevalent primary causes of dementia have overlapping clinical features, our first goal is to improve the distinction between these two groups using biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid (total tau and various phospho-tau proteins, but also glycosphingolipids and other promising molecules) and by using brain imaging, as proposed by the 2010 ESFN guidelines. Second, we will follow-up patients with early behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) using Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI), Alzheimer´s Disease Assesment Scale for non-cognitive symptoms (ADAS-noncog), and behavior rating scale (BEHAVE- AD), to reveal how early non-cognitive symptoms correlate with biochemical, imaging, and genetic biomarkers that may contribute to the risk of AD. Besides gene expression profiling using RNAseq, we will also try to determine polymorphisms of select genes coding for components of monoaminergic systems, inflammation pathways, neuronal differentiation, and lipoprotein metabolism. To identify those patients most likely to benefit from therapeutic intervention, our ultimate long- term objective is to develop reliable diagnostic criteria for detection of preclinical stages of AD. Particular attention will be given to depressive symptoms to assess if treatment of depression in MCI cases may delay the onset of dementia.

Alzheimer's disease; behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia; beta-amyloid; cerebrospinal fluid; genomic profiling; mild cognitive impairment; magnetic resonance imaging; monoaminergic systems; proteomics; tau protein

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