New Biomarker of Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s Disease is a burdensome and costly disease for which there presently exists no cure.  Consequently numerous international; efforts seek to innovate advance diagnostics, to detect the disease at its earliest stages.  Ramon Trullas, from the CSIC Institute of Biomedical Research (Spain), and colleagues have discovered that a decrease in the content of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) may be a preclinical indicator for Alzheimer’s disease; furthermore, there may be a directly causative relationship. The team hypothesizes  that decreased mtDNA levels in CSF reflect the diminished ability of mitochondria to power the brain’s neurons, triggering their death. The decrease in the concentration of mtDNA precedes the appearance of well-known biochemical Alzheimer’s biomarkers (the A[beta]1-42, t-tau, and p-tau proteins), suggesting that the pathophysiological process of Alzheimer’s disease starts earlier than previously thought.  The study authors submit that: “These findings support the hypothesis that mtDNA depletion is a characteristic pathophysiological factor of neurodegeneration in [Alzheimer’s Disease]. “