Glial fibrillary acidic protein and protein S-100B: different concentration pattern of glial proteins in cerebrospinal fluid of patients with Alzheimer's disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease

J Alzheimers Dis. 2009;17(3):541-51. doi: 10.3233/JAD-2009-1075.

Abstract

Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and protein S-100B are established indicators of astrogliosis in neuropathology. As GFAP and S-100B are expressed in different cell populations, variable cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) concentrations of these proteins might reflect disease-specific pathological profiles. Therefore we investigated CSF of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), and non-demented control patients (CON). Measurement of GFAP and S-100B in CSF was performed by commercially available ELISA. Our results show that, in AD, there are significantly higher levels of GFAP concentrations, compared to CON (p = 0.001) and CJD patients (p = 0.009), whereas S-100B is much higher in CJD, compared to AD (p = 0.001) and CON (p = 0.001). In conclusion, GFAP and S-100B represent astroglial markers and the different levels of these proteins in CSF of AD and CJD patients might point to a distinct pathophysiological involvement in these diseases. Apart from pathophysiological aspects, GFAP in particular might serve as an additional diagnostic tool for AD, due to the fact that this protein does not correlate to established markers like tau and amyloid-beta such that analysis of GFAP may be useful for further differential diagnostic approaches in neurodegenerative diseases.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • 14-3-3 Proteins / cerebrospinal fluid
  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Aged, 80 and over
  • Alzheimer Disease / cerebrospinal fluid*
  • Alzheimer Disease / genetics
  • Amyloid beta-Peptides / cerebrospinal fluid
  • Case-Control Studies
  • Creutzfeldt-Jakob Syndrome / cerebrospinal fluid*
  • Creutzfeldt-Jakob Syndrome / genetics
  • Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay / methods
  • Female
  • Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein / cerebrospinal fluid*
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Nerve Growth Factors / cerebrospinal fluid*
  • Peptide Fragments / cerebrospinal fluid
  • S100 Calcium Binding Protein beta Subunit
  • S100 Proteins / cerebrospinal fluid*
  • Statistics, Nonparametric
  • tau Proteins / cerebrospinal fluid

Substances

  • 14-3-3 Proteins
  • Amyloid beta-Peptides
  • Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein
  • Nerve Growth Factors
  • Peptide Fragments
  • S100 Calcium Binding Protein beta Subunit
  • S100 Proteins
  • amyloid beta-protein (1-42)
  • tau Proteins