Abstract
Total tau protein (t-tau) levels in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) (CSF-tau) are markedly elevated in patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Some CSF-tau may leak into the blood. We evaluated t-tau levels in serum (serum-tau) as a possible marker for the differential diagnosis of CJD from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other rapidly progressive dementias (RPD). Serum- and CSF-tau levels were determined in patients with sporadic CJD (n = 12), AD (n = 10) and RPD but no CJD (non-CJD–RPD; n = 9) who showed RPD fulfilling the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria for possible CJD at onset and had a final diagnosis other than CJD. We also analyzed serum-tau levels in healthy volunteers as a control group (n = 10). Serum- as well as CSF-tau levels were significantly elevated in CJD group compared to those in AD, non-CJD–RPD and healthy control groups. Serum-tau would be a simple and useful marker to distinguish CJD from AD and non-CJD–RPD, requiring further large study to confirm this.
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Acknowledgments
This study was supported in part by the Prion disease and Slow Virus Infection Research Group and Research Committee of Surveillance and Infection Control of Prion Disease, funded by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan. We thank Ms. Y. Kakuta and Ms. Y. Yamaguchi for excellent technical support, and thank Drs. K. Shima, C. Ishida, A. Morinaga, and A. Sakai for their assistance in data collection.
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Noguchi-Shinohara, M., Hamaguchi, T., Nozaki, I. et al. Serum tau protein as a marker for the diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. J Neurol 258, 1464–1468 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-011-5960-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-011-5960-x