A Fair Assessment of Evaluation Tools for the Murine Microbead Occlusion Model of Glaucoma.

Despite being one of the most studied eye diseases, clinical translation of glaucoma research is hampered, at least in part, by the lack of validated preclinical models and readouts. The most popular experimental glaucoma model is the murine microbead occlusion model, yet the observed mild phenotype, mixed success rate, and weak reproducibility urge for an expansion of available readout tools. For this purpose, we evaluated various measures that reflect early onset glaucomatous changes in the murine microbead occlusion model. Anterior chamber depth measurements and scotopic threshold response recordings were identified as an outstanding set of tools to assess the model's success rate and to chart glaucomatous damage (or neuroprotection in future studies), respectively. Both are easy-to-measure, in vivo tools with a fast acquisition time and high translatability to the clinic and can be used, whenever judged beneficial, in combination with the more conventional measures in present-day glaucoma research (i.e., intraocular pressure measurements and post-mortem histological analyses). Furthermore, we highlighted the use of dendritic arbor analysis as an alternative histological readout for retinal ganglion cell density counts.

Validation of a prototype tau Thr231 phosphorylation CSF ELISA as a potential biomarker for Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the presence of extracellular amyloid plaques (senile plaques) and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles formed by hyperphosphorylated tau protein. This process leads to neuronal degradation and neuronal death. Phosphorylation of tau protein at threonine 231 (p-tau231) has been shown to be characteristic in post-mortem brain tissue of patients with AD and it can be sensitively detected in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Therefore, it may serve as a biomarker to support the diagnosis of AD. In this study, we analysed how well p-tau231 could differentiate between patients suffering from dementia either due or not due to AD by a sandwich enzyme immunoassay. CSF p-tau231 was significantly higher in patients with dementia due to AD than in those with dementia due to other causes. In addition, we studied different factors affecting p-tau231 levels in CSF. We found that apolipoprotein E genotype influences p-tau231 CSF levels. Gender and age did not affect p-tau231 levels in CSF. Our findings indicate that p-tau231 levels in CSF can be a valuable marker for the clinical diagnosis of AD.