Biomarker Testing: Piercing the Fog of Alzheimer’s and Related Dementia

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementia is one of the growing threats to the sustainability of health and care systems in developed countries, and efforts to find therapies have had scant success. The main reasons for this are lack of efficient therapy, which is linked to too late discovery of the disease itself. With this in mind, biomarkers are recognised as an element which can bring a major contribution to research, helping elucidate the disease and the search for treatments. They are also playing an increasing role in early detection and timely diagnosis, which are considered the principal hopes of effective management in the absence of an effective drug. The current arsenal of biomarkers could already, if more widely deployed, provide an effective minimum service to patients and health systems. A concerted action by policy makers and stakeholders could drive progress in access to AD biomarker testing to provide an optimum service in the medium term. AD and related dementia is one of the growing threats to the sustainability of health and care systems in developed countries, and efforts to find therapies have had scant success. The main reasons for this are lack of efficient therapy, which is linked to too late discovery of the disease itself. With this in mind, biomarkers are recognised as an element which can bring a major contribution to research, helping elucidate the disease and the search for treatments. They are also playing an increasing role in early detection and timely diagnosis, which are considered the principal hopes of effective management in the absence of an effective drug. The current arsenal of biomarkers could already, if more widely deployed, provide an effective minimum service to patients and health systems. A concerted action by policy makers and stakeholders could drive progress in access to AD biomarker testing to provide an optimum service in the medium term.

A Conformational Variant of p53 (U-p53AZ) as Blood-Based Biomarker for the Prediction of the Onset of Symptomatic Alzheimer’s Disease

“…Implementation of minimally-invasive and reliable bloodbased biomarkers could respond to these unmet needs increasing the accuracy of AD diagnosis while improving clinical trial enrolment (9,10). This is particularly relevant in the coming years due to aging of the population and the subsequent increase in the numbers of patients receiving the clinical diagnosis of AD (37).…”

A conformational variant of p53 (U-p53AZ) as blood-based biomarker for the prediction of the onset of symptomatic Alzheimer’s disease

“…Implementation of minimally-invasive and reliable blood-based biomarkers could respond to these unmet needs increasing the accuracy of AD diagnosis while improving clinical trial enrolment (Frisoni et al, 2017;Cummings, 2019). This is particularly relevant in the coming years due to aging of the population and the subsequent increase in the numbers of patients receiving the clinical diagnosis of AD (Horgan et al, 2020).…”

Plasma biomarkers predict cognitive trajectories in an ethnoracially and clinically diverse cohort: Mediation with hippocampal volume

“…Given the important role of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) 16 and cognitive decline, in combination with the strong potential of plasma biomarkers for future use in clinical settings, 17 it is essential to understand how and whether neurodegeneration mediates the association between key plasma biomarkers and cognition in ethnoracially diverse populations. We selected a robust and multifaceted brain morphometry region in cognitive aging and ADRD research for two key reasons.…”