Analytical aspects of molecular Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers

Abstract

In general, a biomarker has multiple uses such as a diagnostic tool and a method to monitor therapy. The quality of a biomarker depends on how big the difference is between, for example, patients and healthy controls, but also on the capacity of the method used to measure it (the uncertainty in the method should be much less than the difference between the groups). A good biomarker should also be specific towards a disease, allowing for differentiation between clinically related syndromes. In addition, it is of importance that the stability of the methods used is high enough to establish cut-off levels both in individual laboratories and on a global scale. In the field of Alzheimer’s disease, there are currently three cerebrospinal fluid markers that have been verified in multiple studies and the analytical aspects of measuring them will be discussed.