Neurodegenerative Disease and Cognitive Impairment in Neurological Pathologies – Diagnosis and Management

A special issue of Diagnostics (ISSN 2075-4418). This special issue belongs to the section "Pathology and Molecular Diagnostics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2024 | Viewed by 493

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Anatomy, University of Medicine and Pharmacy Craiova, 200349 Craiova, Romania
Interests: neurodegenerative disorders; Epilepsy; Parkinson’s disease; Alzheimer’s Disease

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Neurodegenerative diseases represent a generic term for a series of conditions that affect neurons. Neurons are basically the "foundation stone" of the nervous system that cannot be replaced. Neurodegenerative diseases are incurable diseases that lead to the progressive degeneration and death of nerve cells.

Among others, Alzheimer's, Huntington's and Parkinson's diseases affect more than 45 million people worldwide. They usually appear as we get older and unfortunately the treatment has limits.

Patients suffering from these disorders experience changes both in terms of mood and cognitive level.

The impact is also felt by the family and friends of the patient, and it is more difficult, since these conditions cannot be cured. Through studies on laboratory animals and human subjects, it was tried to reduce the evolution of diseases and discover the exact causes and appropriate treatments.

In addition, it has been identified important similarities between neurodegenerative disorders made in the fields of genetics, biochemistry, and cell biology. All these efforts revealed the presence of abnormal proteins and raised questions about how these proteins interfere with normal cellular functions and how they spread in the brain.

Additionally, cognitive disorders associated with neurological diseases such as epilepsy can have a negative impact on the quality of life. The relationship between epilepsy and memory disorders is complex and multifactorial and differs from one person to another.

This Special Issue welcomes submissions of original research and review articles related to any aspect of the diagnosis, molecular mechanisms and pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases or cognitive impairment associated with neurological pathologies, as well as the follow-up and features of novel biomarkers and treatment options.

Dr. Ionica Pirici
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • cognitive disorder
  • Parkinson disease
  • epilepsy
  • Alzheimer disease

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 1110 KiB  
Article
Evaluation and Limitations of the Novel Chemiluminescent Enzyme Immunoassay Technique for Measuring Total Tau Protein in the Cerebrospinal Fluid of Patients with Human Prion Disease: A 10-Year Prospective Study (2011–2020)
by Kong Weijie, Toshiaki Nonaka and Katsuya Satoh
Diagnostics 2024, 14(14), 1520; https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics14141520 - 15 Jul 2024
Viewed by 204
Abstract
Background: Recently, the investigation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers for diagnosing human prion diseases (HPD) has garnered significant attention. Reproducibility and accuracy are paramount in biomarker research, particularly in the measurement of total tau (T-tau) protein, which is a crucial diagnostic marker. Given [...] Read more.
Background: Recently, the investigation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers for diagnosing human prion diseases (HPD) has garnered significant attention. Reproducibility and accuracy are paramount in biomarker research, particularly in the measurement of total tau (T-tau) protein, which is a crucial diagnostic marker. Given the global impact of the coronavirus disease pandemic, the frequency of measuring this protein using one of the world’s fully automated assays, chemiluminescent enzyme immunoassay (CLEA), has increased. At present, the diagnosis and monitoring of neurological diseases mainly rely on traditional methods, but their accuracy and responsiveness are limited. There is limited knowledge of the accuracy of CLEA in tau measurements. We aimed to measure T-tau protein using CLEA and to elucidate its merits and limitations. Methods: We randomly selected 60 patients with rapidly progressive dementia, using ELISA and CLEA analysis of cerebrospinal fluid specimens. Additionally, we used Western blotting to detect the presence of 14-3-3 protein and employed real-time quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC) assays to analyze the same set of samples. Furthermore, we examined the correlation coefficient between ELISA and CLEA results in a subset of 60 samples. Moreover, using CLEA, we evaluated the diurnal reproducibility, storage stability, dilutability, and freeze–thaw effects in three selected samples. Results: In 172 patients, 172 samples were extracted, with each patient providing only one sample, and a total of 88 (35 men and 53 women) tested positive for HPD in the RT-QuIC assay. In contrast, all CSF samples from the remaining 84 patients without HPD (50 men and 34 women) tested negative in the RT-QuIC assay. Both ELISA and CLEA showed perfect sensitivity and specificity (100%) in measuring T-tau protein levels. In addition, ELISA and CLEA are similar in terms of measurement sensitivity and marginal effect of detection extrema. CLEA analysis exhibited instability for certain samples with T-tau protein levels exceeding 2000 pg/mL, leading to low reproducibility during dilution analysis. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that CLEA outperforms ELISA in terms of diurnal reproducibility, storage stability, and freeze–thaw effects. However, ELISA demonstrated superior performance in the dilution assay. Therefore, it is imperative to develop innovative approaches for the dilution of biomarker samples for CLEA measurements during clinical trials. Full article
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