Aim: Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other forms of dementia create a noncurable disease population in world's societies. To develop a blood-based biomarker is important so that the remedial or disease-altering therapeutic intervention for AD patients would be available at the early stage.
Materials & methods: TDP-43 levels were analyzed in postmortem brain tissue and platelets of AD and control subjects.
Results: We observed an increased TDP-43 (<60%) in postmortem AD brain regions and similar trends were also observed in patient's platelets.
Conclusion: Platelet TDP-43 could be used as a surrogate biomarker that is measurable, reproducible and sensitive for screening the patients with some early clinical signs of AD and can be used to monitor disease prognosis.
Keywords: Alzheimer's disease; TDP-43; hippocampus; human platelet; surrogate marker.