Sepoy-logo
No Result
View All Result
Wednesday, May 31, 2023
  • Home
  • News
  • Business
  • Health
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • Economy
  • Crypto
  • Travel
  • Home
  • News
  • Business
  • Health
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • Economy
  • Crypto
  • Travel
No Result
View All Result
SEPOY.NET
No Result
View All Result
Home Health

New biomarker can help identify people with a primary tauopathy

Nicholas by Nicholas
November 24, 2022
in Health
0
New biomarker can help identify people with a primary tauopathy

Zooming in on a single disease and studying it intensely is often the most productive route to finding treatments. But there’s no easy way to distinguish among people living with any of the primary tauopathies -; a group of rare brain diseases marked by rapidly worsening problems with thinking and movement -; because the symptoms are too similar. As a result, most studies on primary tauopathies have included a mix of such diseases, even though researchers know that the diseases differ in important ways and probably require different treatments.

Now, however, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found a biomarker that identifies, with up to 89% accuracy, people with a primary tauopathy called corticobasal degeneration (CBD). Traditional diagnostic methods for CBD are only 25% to 50% accurate, the researchers said.

The biomarker could be developed into a tool to screen potential volunteers for CBD-specific research studies and clinical trials and, eventually, to identify people who could benefit from CBD-specific treatments, the scientists said.

The study is published Nov. 24 in Nature Medicine.

Before, the only way to find out which primary tauopathy a person had was to wait until they died and then examine the person’s brain under a microscope. A patient comes in with stiffness, balance problems, slurred speech and memory issues, and it could be CBD, but it also could be progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) or Alzheimer’s or other diseases. This biomarker can reliably identify people with CBD, which means we can use it to enroll people in clinical trials. And, down the road, it may be key to initiating therapies.”


Chihiro Sato, PhD, co-senior author, assistant professor of neurology

CBD is one of about two dozen brain diseases that are considered tauopathies because they share one critical feature: toxic tau aggregates in the brain. Individual tauopathies involve different subtypes of tau and exhibit different patterns of damage to brain cells and tissues. The collections of symptoms of the various tauopathies overlap, making it difficult for doctors to tell one from another. This complicates efforts to study them and find treatments.

Tauopathies are classed as either primary or secondary, depending on when tau tangles appear in the course of the disease. In primary tauopathies, tau tangles form in the beginning, seemingly on their own. In secondary tauopathies, tangles form only after other changes have taken place in the brain. For example, in Alzheimer’s disease, the most common secondary tauopathy, the brain protein amyloid beta builds up for years before tau tangles appear.

In 2020, Kanta Horie, PhD, a research associate professor of neurology and the first author on the current paper, developed a highly sensitive technique to detect specific fragments of tau in the cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord. Horie and colleagues used the technique to identify a novel form of tau in Alzheimer’s patients, and showed that the level of the novel tau in the cerebrospinal fluid indicates the stage of the disease, and tracks with the amount of tau tangles in the brain.

As part of this study, Horie, Sato and colleagues -; including co-senior author Randall J. Bateman, MD, the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Distinguished Professor of Neurology -; used the technique to search for distinctive forms of tau linked to primary tauopathies. To ensure that the study subjects were classified accurately, Horie, Sato and Bateman collaborated with co-authors Adam Boxer, MD, PhD, Salvatore Spina, MD, PhD, and Lawren VandeVrede, MD, PhD, all in the Department of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. The team examined brain tissues and cerebrospinal fluid from people who had died with dementia and movement disorders, and whose specific diseases had been confirmed at autopsy. The study population included people with one of five primary tauopathies -; CBD; PSP; frontotemporal lobar degeneration with microtubule association protein tau mutations (FTLD-MAPT); agyrophilic grain disease; and Pick’s disease -; as well as Alzheimer’s, and dementia not related to tau. For comparison, they also examined samples from people without dementia.

Two particular forms of tau -; microtubule binding region (MTBR)-tau 275 and MTBR-tau 282 -; were unusually high in the brains and low in the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with CBD and a subset of FTLD-MAPT. Further investigation showed that these forms of tau distinguish people with CBD from those with other primary tauopathies with 84% to 89% accuracy, depending on the disease.

“Even if there’s an experimental drug available that specifically targets the kind of tau in CBD, it is very challenging to test it without a biomarker,” Horie said. “The trial might fail even when the drug works if the population is heterogenous. Drug trials that specifically target the kind of tau in CBD can be improved by enrolling correctly diagnosed patients. Having a biomarker opens up a pathway for pharmaceutical companies to improve clinical trials and accelerate research toward therapies for CBD.”

Several experimental drugs targeting tau are in the pipeline. Most were designed with Alzheimer’s patients in mind, but they may be effective as therapies for primary tauopathies. Horie’s technique could be used to find biomarkers for other primary tauopathies, opening the door to more clinical trials, the researchers said.

“CBD patients and families are desperate for effective therapies, but it has been challenging to organize clinical trials for this fatal disease,” Boxer said. “Until now, we did not have a specific biomarker to accurately diagnose patients. This new biomarker also opens the door to testing many new tau-directed therapies for CBD, because it may allow us to directly measure the ability of these treatments to lower toxic tau protein levels in patients’ brains.”

Source:

Washington University School of Medicine

Journal reference:

Horie, K., et al. (2022) CSF tau microtubule binding region identifies pathological changes in primary tauopathies. Nature Medicine. doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-02075-9.

READ ALSO

Color-changing materials hold promise for diverse scenarios in medical cold supply chains

How a medical recoding may limit cancer patients’ options for breast reconstruction

Tags: BiomarkerBrainBrain DiseaseCorticobasal DegenerationDementiaDiagnosticDiagnosticsDrugsMedicineNeurologyProteinResearch

Related Posts

Color-changing materials hold promise for diverse scenarios in medical cold supply chains
Health

Color-changing materials hold promise for diverse scenarios in medical cold supply chains

May 31, 2023
How a medical recoding may limit cancer patients’ options for breast reconstruction
Health

How a medical recoding may limit cancer patients’ options for breast reconstruction

May 31, 2023
North American arrival of A(H5N1) influenza raises concerns of potential pandemic outbreak
Health

North American arrival of A(H5N1) influenza raises concerns of potential pandemic outbreak

May 31, 2023
Largest clinical case series of laughing gas users finds a predominance of young Asian men
Health

Largest clinical case series of laughing gas users finds a predominance of young Asian men

May 31, 2023
DNA test results may enhance prevention and treatment of alcohol use disorder
Health

DNA test results may enhance prevention and treatment of alcohol use disorder

May 30, 2023
Obesity increases the chances of developing mental disorders for all age groups
Health

Obesity increases the chances of developing mental disorders for all age groups

May 30, 2023
Next Post
Crisis in eastern Congo: immediate ceasefire agreed

Crisis in eastern Congo: immediate ceasefire agreed

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

POPULAR NEWS

Roblox Is Unbreakable Trello Is this safe?

Roblox Is Unbreakable Trello Is this safe?

November 4, 2022
Discord Registered Games  Discord Registered Gaming You need to join the Club

Discord Registered Games Discord Registered Gaming You need to join the Club

November 4, 2022
How To Chose the Right Data Analytics Program

How To Chose the Right Data Analytics Program

November 4, 2022
Chandrashekhar Guruji Wiki, Age, Girlfriend, Wife, Family, Biography & More

Chandrashekhar Guruji Wiki, Age, Girlfriend, Wife, Family, Biography & More

November 4, 2022
Heavy explosion on market square in Halle – three injured

Heavy explosion on market square in Halle – three injured

November 4, 2022

EDITOR'S PICK

Top 5 low calorie alcoholic drinks UK | Can you drink alcohol and still lose weight?

October 2, 2022
When price increases are unjustified

When price increases are unjustified

January 4, 2023
Where brokers writing construction coverage may see bottlenecks

Where brokers writing construction coverage may see bottlenecks

March 31, 2023

FAZ panel discussion about possible deselection of Feldmann

October 24, 2022

About

Sepoy.net is a perfect place for people who want daily updates on news related to business, technology, entertainment, health, cryptocurrency etc.

Contact: [email protected]

Major Categories

News

Business

Tech

Economy

 

Recent Posts

  • Binance is reviewing its organization: the cryptocurrency exchange will lay off part of its workforce
  • Color-changing materials hold promise for diverse scenarios in medical cold supply chains
  • Lush data package for long-term surfers – Monthly terminable 70 GB tariff at a special price of 19.99 euros

Pages

  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Disclaimer
  • DMCA
  • Home
  • Privacy Policy

© 2023 Sepoy.net

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • News
  • Health
  • Tech
  • Science
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel

© 2023 Sepoy.net

x