title: Artificial neural networks allow the use of simultaneous measurements of Alzheimer disease markers for early detection of the disease.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Previous studies have shown that in platelets of mild Alzheimer Disease (AD) patients there are alterations of specific APP forms, paralleled by alteration in expression level of both ADAM 10 and BACE when compared to control subjects. Due to the poor linear relation among each key-element of beta-amyloid cascade and the target diagnosis, the use of systems able to afford non linear tasks, like artificial neural networks (ANNs), should allow a better discriminating capacity in comparison with classical statistics.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To evaluate the accuracy of ANNs in AD diagnosis.
  
  
  METHODS
  37 mild-AD patients and 25 control subjects were enrolled, and APP, ADM10 and BACE measures were performed. Fifteen different models of feed-forward and complex-recurrent ANNs (provided by Semeion Research Centre), based on different learning laws (back propagation, sine-net, bi-modal) were compared with the linear discriminant analysis (LDA).
  
  
  RESULTS
  The best ANN model correctly identified mild AD patients in the 94% of cases and the control subjects in the 92%. The corresponding diagnostic performance obtained with LDA was 90% and 73%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This preliminary study suggests that the processing of biochemical tests related to beta-amyloid cascade with ANNs allows a very good discrimination of AD in early stages, higher than that obtainable with classical statistics methods.
authors.affiliation: Centre of Excellence for Neurodegenerative Disorders, Department of Pharmacological Sciences, University of Milan, Italy. monica.diluca@unimi.it
authors.forename: Monica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Di Luca
authors.forename: Enzo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Grossi
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Borroni
authors.forename: Martina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zimmermann
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Marcello
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Colciaghi
authors.forename: Fabrizio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gardoni
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Intraligi
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Padovani
authors.forename: Massimo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Buscema