New biomarker allows accurate detection of Alzheimer’s disease in early stages

A group of researchers confirmed the connection between blood level GFAP protein And Development Alzheimer’s diseasea discovery that will help improve the accurate diagnosis of this disease.

In addition, a study conducted by scientists from the CIEN Foundation – Research Center for Neurological Diseases, for the first time established in humans the connection between this protein and activation of astrocytes in the brain, which hook

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Details of this study were published this Thursday in the journal Brain. Along with deposits of tau and amyloid proteins, astrocytes (brain cells) are one of three elements required to initiate the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

Recent studies have shown that its activation is a necessary step between amyloid and tau pathology, which leads to neuronal death in Alzheimer’s disease.

Disease progression

To investigate, the team examined the relationship between blood levels of GFAP and brain damage from AD, using a group of dementia patients from the Reina Sofia Foundation’s Alzheimer’s Center.

The team, led by Pascual Sánchez Juan, scientific director of the Institute and member of the dementia research group of the Spanish Society of Neurology, studied GFAP levels at three points: at admission in older adults, at an intermediate point and during life. grade.

The results showed that high levels of GFAP were associated with greater disease progression, greater cognitive impairment, and lower brain weight.

800,000 people in Spain

They also found that GFAP levels are associated with astrocyte activation in the brain, suggesting that this “third element” functions as a link between amyloid pathology and tau pathology.

The study confirmed the role of this pprotein as a biomarker for the diagnosis and monitoring of Alzheimer’s disease, “even in patients with advanced dementia and mixed pathology, for the first time reliably showing the correlation of GFAP with astrocyte activation in the human brain,” emphasizes Sánchez Juan.

This discovery not only means that astrocytes are a very promising therapeutic target in the search for treatments, but also paves the way to understanding the mechanisms that trigger this disease that affects some people. 800,000 people in Spain

.