title: Inflammatory mediators as biomarkers in brain disorders.
abstract: Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer, Parkinson, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and Huntington are incurable and debilitating conditions that result in progressive death of the neurons. The definite diagnosis of a neurodegenerative disorder is disadvantaged by the difficulty in obtaining biopsies and thereby to validate the clinical diagnosis with pathological results. Biomarkers are valuable indicators for detecting different phases of a disease such as prevention, early onset, treatment, progression, and monitoring the effect of pharmacological responses to a therapeutic intervention. Inflammation occurs in neurodegenerative diseases, and identification and validation of molecules involved in this process could be a strategy for finding new biomarkers. The ideal inflammatory biomarker needs to be easily measurable, must be reproducible, not subject to wide variation in the population, and unaffected by external factors. Our review summarizes the most important inflammation biomarkers currently available, whose specificity could be utilized for identifying and monitoring distinctive phases of different neurodegenerative diseases.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomedicine ed Molecular Immunology, National Research Council of Italy, Palermo, Italy.
authors.forename: Domenico
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Nuzzo
authors.forename: Pasquale
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Picone
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Caruana
authors.forename: Sonya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Vasto
authors.forename: Annalisa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Barera
authors.forename: Calogero
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Caruso
authors.forename: Marta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Di Carlo
mesh_terms: D015415:Biomarkers; D006801:Humans; D007249:Inflammation / Q000276:immunology / Q000473:pathology; D018836:Inflammation Mediators / Q000378:metabolism*; D019636:Neurodegenerative Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis*
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers; D018836:Inflammation Mediators