They identify a biomarker that detects the initial stages of Alzheimer’s

Researchers at the Barcelonaßeta Brain Research Center (BBRC), the Spanish research center of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation, identified a biomarker in the blood that allows the very precise detection of the initial stages of the disease of Alzheimer.

The research found that glial fibrillar acidic protein (GFAP) is a very accurate biomarker for diagnosing the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease in the blood.

“The finding will allow to improve the diagnostic precision of the preclinical phase of Alzheimer’s through a blood test, combining the detection of the biomarker GFAP with others recently discovered,” explained the head of the group of Biomarkers in Fluid and Translational Neurology at BBRC, Marc Suarez-Calvet.

The results of the trial, published in the journal ‘JAMA Neurology’, were validated in about 900 participants from three cohorts dedicated to research in Alzheimer’s prevention.

Suárez-Calvet details that GFAP is a specific brain protein of astroglia cells, which are involved in different functional processes, such as supporting the activity of neurons and in the regulation of the blood-brain barrier.

When some type of brain damage occurs, a reaction of these cells takes place, called astrogliosis, which tries to contain the brain damage and increases the expression of GFAP and other markers.

In the case of Alzheimer’s disease, GFAP is a biomarker that was usually measured in the cerebrospinal fluid, after performing a lumbar puncture in the patient.

The novelty provided by this study is that it shows that the GFAP measured in blood plasma is better than that measured in cerebrospinal fluid to determine, with more precision and in a less invasive way, where the person is in Alzheimer’s disease affected.

“We have seen that the levels of the GFAP biomarker are higher in people who are in the asymptomatic stage of Alzheimer’s, and that allow us to differentiate those with or without amyloid pathology in the brain, which is the stage prior to the disease”, added the researcher Marta Milan-Alomà.

The results of the study could be confirmed in people who are in the different stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and who participate in three independent international cohorts.

In the first place, the researchers analyzed the blood samples of 387 people without cognitive alterations and with a certain risk of developing Alzheimer’s, from the Alfa Study, promoted in 2013 in Barcelona (northeast of Spain) by the Pasqual Maragall Foundation and the Foundation “ The Caixa”.

Likewise, they investigated the plasma of 300 asymptomatic and cognitively impaired people who are part of the TRIAD study, led at McGill University in Montreal, and, finally, they analyzed the samples of 187 cognitively impaired patients from the Lariboisière Hospital in Paris.

The results of this international study add to the latest findings of blood biomarkers to detect Alzheimer’s disease.

In November 2020, the same Suárez-Calvet team at the BBRC identified other biomarkers, in this case the tau protein, to detect the initial phases.

According to Suárez-Calvet, “in just two years research on Alzheimer’s biomarkers in the blood is advancing so much that we are convinced that in the near future we will be able to detect the silent changes that occur in the brain with a simple blood test requested by the family doctor, which will allow us to test treatments before the neuronal damage is irreversible ”.

Currently, the Pasqual Maragall Foundation is setting up a translational laboratory equipped with state-of-the-art technologies to investigate the disease.

This research had the collaboration of the University of Gothenburg, the McGill University of Montreal, the University of Paris, the Lariboisière Fernand-Widal Hospital in Paris, the Hospital del Mar and Hospital del Mar Institute for Medical Research (IMIM), the Ciber of Fragility and Healthy Aging (Ciberfes) and the Ciber of Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN).