Cerebrospinal fluid level of proNGF as potential diagnostic biomarker in patients with frontotemporal dementia

TL;DR

This study explores proNGF levels in cerebrospinal fluid as a potential biomarker to improve the diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia.

Contribution

The study introduces proNGF as a novel potential biomarker for diagnosing frontotemporal dementia.

Findings

ProNGF levels in cerebrospinal fluid significantly differ between frontotemporal dementia patients and Alzheimer’s disease, memory complaint, and control groups.

Adding proNGF to existing biomarkers improves diagnostic accuracy for frontotemporal dementia.

The findings suggest proNGF could be part of a biomarker panel for better FTD diagnosis.

Abstract

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is an extremely heterogeneous and complex neurodegenerative disease, exhibiting different phenotypes, genetic backgrounds, and pathological states. Due to these characteristics, and to the fact that clinical symptoms overlap with those of other neurodegenerative diseases or psychiatric disorders, the diagnosis based only on the clinical evaluation is very difficult. The currently used biomarkers help in the clinical diagnosis, but are insufficient and do not cover all the clinical needs.

By the means of a new immunoassay, we have measured and analyzed the proNGF levels in 43 cerebrospinal fluids (CSF) from FTD patients, and compared the results to those obtained in CSF from 84 Alzheimer’s disease (AD), 15 subjective memory complaints (SMC) and 13 control subjects.

A statistically significant difference between proNGF levels in FTD compared to AD, SMC and controls subjects was found. The statistical models reveal that proNGF determination increases the accuracy of FTD diagnosis, if added to the clinically validated CSF biomarkers.

These results suggest that proNGF could be included in a panel of biomarkers to improve the FTD diagnosis.

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