α-Synuclein aggregates are a major pathogenetic component of Parkinson disease (PD), and naturally occuring antibodies for this protein have been investigated as a biomarker of PD. A new study used ELISA to compare levels of naturally occurding antibodies for α-synuclein in the serum and cerebrospinal fluid of patients with PD and controls. No differences were found, but the investigators reported high inter-assay variability in antibody measurements, which could have biased the results. The observation highlights the importance of established protocols and quality control to the investigation of biomakers for PD.
References
Heinzel, S. et al. Naturally occurring alpha-synuclein autoantibodies in Parkinson's disease: sources of (error) variance in biomarker assays. PLoS ONE 9, e114566 (2014)
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α-Synuclein antibodies might not be a reliable PD biomarker. Nat Rev Neurol 11, 4 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2014.248
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2014.248