Cerebrospinal Fluid Biomarkers for Alzheimer’s Disease: Their Role in Clinical Chemistry

In view of current (AChE inhibitors) and future (e.g. anti-Aβ aggregators), development and evaluation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has become a rapidly growing research field. Diagnostic biomarkers for AD would be especially valuable as aids in the diagnosis early in the course of the disease, when correct diagnosis is difficult, and when therapeutic compounds have the greatest potential of being effective. This paper reviews CSF biomarkers for AD, with emphasis on their role in the clinical diagnosis, and methodological aspects of importance for developing such analyses. Today, two biochemical markers, CSF-tau and CSF-Aβ42, perform satisfactory enough to have a role in the clinical workup of patients dementia, if used together with the cumulative information from clinical information and brain-imaging techniques. These markers are especially useful to discriminate early or incipient AD from age-associated memory impairment, depression, and some secondary dementias.