Amino acid profiling as a method of discovering biomarkers for diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases

The trend of growing population of 60+ years old people is visible in most of the highly developed European countries. Recently researchers have shown an increased interest in aging-associated diseases including neurological disorders. Neurodegenerative diseases are a very important clinical problem for several reasons. One of the key aspects are: frequency of occurrence as well as difficulties in the diagnosis, therapeutic problems and care of elderly patients. Furthermore, the very important point is the significant decrease of quality of life of untreated patients and late-stage diagnosis of the disease. It is crucial to develop a new, faster, high specificity and more sensitive diagnostic technology. Metabolomic profiling is a new, promising field of systems biology which may be applied in screening, diagnosis, disease typing and monitoring of treatment. It is a biochemical approach for biomarker discovery. Amino acids (AA) play very integral roles in the central nervous system as neurotransmitters, regulators of metabolism and neuromodulators. Research presented in this publication is focused on patients with Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer disease, and elderly patients. In all analyzed cases significant changes in the amino acid profile in patients comparing to healthy controls were observed. This study indicates potential of amino acid profiling as a method for diagnosis.