AI Article Synopsis

  • The study aimed to explore the efficacy of plasma markers such as neurofilament light chain (NfL), phosphorylated tau (p-Tau), and total tau (t-Tau) in determining the clinical severity of Huntington's disease (HD) among Korean patients.
  • Involving 67 genetically-confirmed HD patients, researchers utilized various assessment tools to evaluate motor and cognitive function and measured plasma concentrations of the biomarkers using advanced assays.
  • Results indicated that NfL was significantly elevated in HD patients, particularly increasing from premanifest to manifest stages, while p-Tau levels correlated with clinical severity but t-Tau did not show notable differences among groups, suggesting NfL and p-Tau as potential biomarkers for HD severity.

Article Abstract

Objective: To investigate neurofilament light chain (NfL), phosphorylated tau (p-Tau) and total tau (t-Tau) as plasma markers for clinical severity in Korean Huntington's disease (HD) cohort.

Methods: Genetically-confirmed 67 HD patients participated from 13 referral hospitals in South Korea. The subjects were evaluated with the Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale (UHDRS), total motor score (TMS) and total functional capacity (TFC), Mini-Mental Status Examination (K-MMSE), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA-K), and Beck's depression inventory (K-BDI). We measured plasma NfL, p-Tau and t-Tau concentrations using single-molecule array (SIMOA) assays. Stages of HD were classified based on UHDRS-TFC score and plasma markers were analyzed for correlation with clinical severity scales.

Results: Plasma NfL was elevated in both 6 premanifest and 61 full manifest HD patients compared to the reference value, which increased further from premanifest to manifest HD groups. The NfL level was not significantly correlated with UHDRS TMS or TFC scores in manifest HD patients. Plasma p-Tau was also elevated in HD patients (p = 0.038). The level was the highest in stage III-V HD (n = 30) group (post-hoc p < 0.05). The p-Tau was correlated with UHDRS TFC scores (adjusted p = 0.002). Plasma t-Tau neither differed among the groups nor associated with any clinical variables.

Conclusions: This study supports plasma NfL being a biomarker for initial HD manifestation in Korean cohort, and a novel suggestion of plasma p-Tau as a potential biomarker reflecting the clinical severity in full-manifest HD.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jns.2023.120744DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

huntington's disease
12
phosphorylated tau
8
plasma markers
8
clinical severity
8
plasma nfl
8
manifest patients
8
plasma
6
plasma neurofilament
4
neurofilament light-chain
4
light-chain phosphorylated
4

Similar Publications

Background: There are no disease modifying therapies for Huntington's disease (HD), a rare but fatal genetic neurodegenerative condition. To develop and test new management strategies, a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying HD progression is needed. Aberrant changes in thalamo-cortical and striato-cerebellar circuitry have been observed in asymptomatic HD, along with transient enlargement of the dentate nucleus.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Huntington's disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a repeat of the cytosine-adenine-guanine trinucleotide (CAG) in the huntingtin gene (HTT). This results in the translation of a mutant huntingtin (mHTT) protein with an abnormally long polyglutamine (polyQ) repeat. The pathology of HD leads to neuronal cell loss, motor abnormalities, and dementia.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

ARCH: Large-scale knowledge graph via aggregated narrative codified health records analysis.

J Biomed Inform

January 2025

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Ave, Boston, 02115, MA, USA; VA Boston Healthcare System, 150 S Huntington Ave, Boston, 02130, MA, USA. Electronic address:

Objective: Electronic health record (EHR) systems contain a wealth of clinical data stored as both codified data and free-text narrative notes (NLP). The complexity of EHR presents challenges in feature representation, information extraction, and uncertainty quantification. To address these challenges, we proposed an efficient Aggregated naRrative Codified Health (ARCH) records analysis to generate a large-scale knowledge graph (KG) for a comprehensive set of EHR codified and narrative features.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Vitamin B (thiamine) plays an important role in human metabolism. It is essential for the proper growth and development of the body and has a positive effect on the functioning of the digestive, cardiovascular, and nervous systems. Additionally, it stimulates the brain and improves the psycho-emotional state.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Associations Between Diabetes Mellitus and Neurodegenerative Diseases.

Int J Mol Sci

January 2025

Chair and Department of General Biology and Parasitology, Medical University of Warsaw, Chałubińskiego 5, 02-004 Warsaw, Poland.

Diabetes mellitus (DM) and neurodegenerative diseases/disturbances are worldwide health problems. The most common chronic conditions diagnosed in persons 60 years and older are type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and cognitive impairment. It was found that diabetes mellitus is a major risk for cognitive decline, dementia, Parkinson's disease (PD), Alzheimer's disease (AD), Huntington's disease (HD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative disorders.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!