Biomarker closer for Alzheimer’s disease

Biomarker closer for Alzheimer’s disease. Jul 2010, PR 152/10 Research led by the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, and published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, has found that blood levels of the protein clusterin could be an early biomarker of Alzheimer's disease (AD), many years before symptoms appear. Comparing blood samples and brain scans of 300 research participants with AD, mild cognitive impairment or normal cognition, the team of scientists found that increased levels of a single protein - clusterin - were related to brain shrinkage, severity of memory problems and a risk of faster memory loss shown on the brain scans many years later. These findings could lead to the development of a blood test to identify who would benefit from early treatment of AD and also whether treatments were working to delay or prevent brain damage. Using the same method in blood samples from volunteers in an ongoing study in the United States, the researchers also showed that increased amounts of clusterin, measured a decade earlier to the brain scans, were linked to higher levels of beta amyloid in the brain. Finally, researchers discovered increased levels of clusterin in the blood of mice with AD, as they were ageing. Under the microscope, they observed clusterin to be surrounding the amyloid plaques in the mice's brain, indicating that clusterin might work to help protect the brain from amyloid protein.