Development of Early Prediction and Discriminating Techniques for Lewy Body Diseases

Abstract

The development of therapeutic agents for neurodegenerative disorders is an urgent issue in our super-aging society. On this point, screening target patients is essential for medical treatment. Dementia and Parkinson's disease (PD) are often diagnosed after the onset, which limits the therapeutic effect after the disease has progressed. We previously demonstrated that fatty acid-binding proteins (FABPs) are critical for the pathogenesis of cognitive and motor dysfunctions, which were associated with neuroinflammation pathology. To develop quantitative biomarkers to detect pathogenesis, we measured plasma from 600 patients with mild cognition impairment (MCI), Alzheimer's disease (AD), PD, and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), using a high-sensitivity ELISA system. Plasma FABP3 level was increased in each disorder. Diverse disease-specific differences were observed in the plasma content of various additional biomarkers. Optimizing quantification methods resulted in unique techniques for discriminating each disease. Based on the data, we discuss our novel technique using unique biomarkers that discriminates between MCI, AD, PD, and DLB, which enables us to accelerate the quantitative diagnostics of various neurodegenerative diseases essential for early therapeutic intervention.