Updates on ALS biomarkers
The latest updates on ALS from the ALS Clinical research group
Ulf Kläppe et al recently (October 2023) published an article showing how biomarkers of neuroaxonal degeneration outperformed biomarkers of neuroinflammation in ALS, and that the performance of these biomarkers differed according to ALS onset type.
Kläppe et al performed a case-control study with 192 incident ALS patients, 42 ALS mimics, 114 neurological controls and 117 healthy controls, and assessed biomarkers of neuroaxonal degeneration (neurofilament light [NfL] in serum and CSF and neurofilament heavy [pNfH] in CSF) and biomarkers of neuroinflammation (chitotriosidase-1 [CHIT1] and monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 [MCP-1] in CSF). They showed that NfL and pNfH were better at discriminating ALS patients from mimics. NfL and pNfH were also better at predicting functional decline and survival. Longitudinally, all biomarkers were stable over time. However, in contrast to spinal onset patients, in bulbar onset patients, neurofilaments and CHIT1 performed worse at predicting survival and seemed to increase over time.
Link to the article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37789557/