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. 2008 Aug;116(2):141-6.
doi: 10.1007/s00401-008-0389-8. Epub 2008 May 28.

TDP-43 protein in plasma may index TDP-43 brain pathology in Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration

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TDP-43 protein in plasma may index TDP-43 brain pathology in Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration

Penelope Foulds et al. Acta Neuropathol. 2008 Aug.

Abstract

Autopsy studies have shown that about 55% of patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and 25% of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) harbour TDP-43 immunoreactive pathological changes in their brains. Using ELISA, we investigated whether we could detect the presence, or increased amounts, of TDP-43 in plasma of patients with FTLD and AD compared to normal control subjects. We detected elevated levels of TDP-43 protein in plasma of 46% patients with FTLD with clinical frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and 22% patients with AD, compared to 8% of control subjects. The proportions of patients with FTD and AD showing raised plasma TDP-43 levels correspond closely to those proportions known from autopsy studies to contain TDP-43 pathological changes in their brains. Raised TDP-43 plasma levels may thereby index TDP-43 pathology within the brain. Plasma TDP-43 levels may be a biomarker that can provide a laboratory test capable of identifying the presence of TDP-43 brain pathology in neurodegenerative disease during life. It may help to distinguish those cases of FTLD with ubiquitin/TDP-43 pathology in their brains from those with tauopathy. As a predictive test, plasma TDP-43 level may have great practical value in directing therapeutic strategies aimed at preventing or removing tau or TDP-43 pathological changes from the brain in FTLD and AD.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Standard curve for the TDP-43 ELISA (data show mean ± SD)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Box-whisker plots for the plasma ELISA results (absorbance values). The length of each box represents the interquartile range (75–25%) of the sample, the solid line drawn across the box the median, the dashed line the mean, and outliers are denoted by dots. The dotted line representing the 0.11 cut-off corresponds to the 99% upper confidence level for the control group
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Immunoblotting results. Lane 1 molecular weight markers (numbers to left in kDa); lane 2 protein immunocaptured from a plasma sample with a high ELISA reading

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