Using cerebrospinal fluid marker profiles in clinical diagnosis of dementia with Lewy bodies, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease.

BACKGROUND: Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is difficult to differentiate from other neuro-degenerative diseases. Patients are often mistaken to suffer from Parkinson's disease (PD) or Alzheimer's disease (AD) because of the overlapping clinical appearances concerning cognition and movement. OBJECTIVE: We investigated the possibility for a valid differential diagnosis using cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers. METHODS: In the context of a large retrospective study, we analyzed data of patients suffering from degenerative, ischemic, or inflammatory CNS (central nervous system) diseases and identified those with DLB (n = 34), PD (n = 37), and AD (n = 47) for further analyses. RESULTS: We detected abnormalities in the CSF profiles of those patients with DLB while using a combination of decreased amyloid-ß (Aß)42 and increased tau levels. By stratification of data by disease severity, we observed a high sensitivity of this combination especially in the subgroup of patients with advanced stages, while the sensitivity in early forms was lower. In addition, with clinical deterioration, the abnormalities in the CSF profile became more pronounced. CONCLUSION: We conclude that DLB can be distinguished from PD, in spite of both being synucleinopathies, by CSF profiles using neurodegenerative marker analysis. The pathophysiology of increased tau and decreased Aß levels in those conditions has to be elucidated further, since both proteins are known to be involved in the pathogenesis of AD, but no clear explanation has been postulated for DLB yet.

Cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers in Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia and ischemic stroke patients: a critical analysis.

Vascular factors are thought to contribute to the development of disease pathology in neurodegenerative dementia such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). Another entity, called vascular dementia (VaD), comprises a less defined group of dementia patients having various vascular diseases that especially emerge in the elderly population and require valid options for examination and differential diagnosis. In the context of a retrospective study, we analyzed the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers t-tau, p-tau and Aß42 of a total of 131 patients with AD (n = 47), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (n = 22), VaD (n = 44) and stroke (n = 18). We found a remarkable alteration in CSF biomarker profile in AD, VaD and in acute ischemic events. CSF profile in AD patients was altered in a very similar way as in stroke patients, without statistical differences. In stroke, increase depend largely on size and duration after the initial event. Total tau levels were useful to differ between VaD and stroke. Aß42 decreased in a similar way in AD, VaD and stroke and had a trend to lower levels in MCI but not in controls.