An antibody microarray analysis of serum cytokines in neurodegenerative Parkinsonian syndromes

BACKGROUND: Microarray technology may offer a new opportunity to gain insight into disease-specific global protein expression profiles. The present study was performed to apply a serum antibody microarray to screen for differentially regulated cytokines in Parkinson's disease (PD), multiple system atrophy (MSA), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and corticobasal syndrome (CBS). RESULTS: Serum samples were obtained from patients with clinical diagnoses of PD (n = 117), MSA (n = 31) and PSP/CBS (n = 38) and 99 controls. Cytokine profiles of sera from patients and controls were analyzed with a semiquantitative human antibody array for 174 cytokines and the expression of 12 cytokines was found to be significantly altered. In a next step, results from the microarray experiment were individually validated by different immunoassays. Immunoassay validation confirmed a significant increase of median PDGF-BB levels in patients with PSP/CBS, MSA and PD and a decrease of median prolactin levels in PD. However, neither PDGF-BB nor prolactin were specific biomarkers to discriminate PSP/CBS, MSA, PD and controls. CONCLUSIONS: In our unbiased cytokine array based screening approach and validation by a different immunoassay only two of 174 cytokines were significantly altered between patients and controls.