Development and validation of a novel biomarker panel for early detection of neurodegenerative diseases

Abstract

The identification of neurodegenerative diseases at an early stage is still a significant problem in the differential diagnosis. Thus, in the context of this work, we established and tested a new biomarker set for improving early diagnosis of these disorders. We selected three specific biomarkers, namely Amyloid-beta 42, Tau Protein, and Neurofilament Light Chain based on the levels found in a sample of a hundred participants, half of whom were controls and the other half were neurodegenerative cases. The results shown that there was a high level of these biomarkers in the neurodegenerative group than the control group. The validation phase revealed that the biomarker panel particularly Panel 1 (Amyloid-beta 42 and Tau Protein) yielded better accuracy with sensitivity of 85 percent, specificity of 90 percent and AUC of 0. 93. Hence, this panel was shown to be more sensitive and specific compared to traditional diagnostic procedures including CSF analysis and MRI. Furthermore, the correlations calculated for the biomarkers were high and significant between each other particularly between Amyloid-beta 42 and Tau Protein. These results suggest that this new biomarker panel could enhance the early detection and diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases by a large margin. More studies are needed to replicate these results in the different and more extensive samples and to evaluate the panel in the clinical context.