Blood-Based Biomarkers in Alzheimer's Disease: Advancing Non-Invasive Diagnostics and Prognostics

Int J Mol Sci. 2024 Oct 10;25(20):10911. doi: 10.3390/ijms252010911.

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most prevalent form of dementia, is expected to rise dramatically in incidence due to the global population aging. Traditional diagnostic approaches, such as cerebrospinal fluid analysis and positron emission tomography, are expensive and invasive, limiting their routine clinical use. Recent advances in blood-based biomarkers, including amyloid-beta, phosphorylated tau, and neurofilament light, offer promising non-invasive alternatives for early AD detection and disease monitoring. This review synthesizes current research on these blood-based biomarkers, highlighting their potential to track AD pathology and enhance diagnostic accuracy. Furthermore, this review uniquely integrates recent findings on protein-protein interaction networks and microRNA pathways, exploring novel combinations of proteomic, genomic, and epigenomic biomarkers that provide new insights into AD's molecular mechanisms. Additionally, we discuss the integration of these biomarkers with advanced neuroimaging techniques, emphasizing their potential to revolutionize AD diagnostics. Although large-scale validation is still needed, these biomarkers represent a critical advancement toward more accessible, cost-effective, and early diagnostic tools for AD.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease (AD); abnormal protein accumulation; advanced neuroimaging; amyloid-beta (Aβ); blood-based biomarkers; dementia; early detection; neurodegeneration; neurofilament light chain (NfL); neuroinflammation; non-invasive diagnostics; phosphorylated tau (p-tau); prognostics; vascular pathology.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Alzheimer Disease* / blood
  • Alzheimer Disease* / cerebrospinal fluid
  • Alzheimer Disease* / diagnosis
  • Alzheimer Disease* / metabolism
  • Amyloid beta-Peptides* / blood
  • Amyloid beta-Peptides* / cerebrospinal fluid
  • Amyloid beta-Peptides* / metabolism
  • Biomarkers*
  • Humans
  • Prognosis
  • Proteomics / methods
  • tau Proteins / cerebrospinal fluid
  • tau Proteins / metabolism

Substances

  • Biomarkers
  • Amyloid beta-Peptides
  • tau Proteins

Grants and funding

Julián Benito-León is supported by the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA (NINDS #R01 NS39422) and by the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan at the Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant TED2021-130174B-C33, NETremor).