Elevated levels of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) neuronal injury markers (neurofilament light chain [NF-L] and total tau protein [t-tau]) and of the astroglial marker glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) are found in etiologically different neurological disorders affecting the peripheral and the central nervous system.
Interestingly, tau protein amounts were significantly affected in the cerebellar and hippocampal regions which coincidentally are the major brain regions affected in several neurological disorders.
Microtubule-associated Tau proteins are the basic component of intraneuronal and glial inclusions observed in many neurological disorders, the so-called tauopathies.
Frontotemporal dementia and parkinsonism linked to chromosome 17 (FTDP-17) is a familial neurological disorder, characterized genetically by autosomal dominant inheritance, clinically by behavioral abnormalities and parkinsonism, and neuropathologically by tauopathy.
Through ultrastructual analyses, it has been determined that the tau protein in these lesions is filamentous and organized into paired-helical filaments, straight filaments, or ribbon-like filaments (Goedert et al., The Molecular and Genetic Basis of Neurological Disease (1997) 613).
The human tau gene, which promotes assembly of neuronal microtubules, has been associated with several rare neurologic diseases that clinically include parkinsonian features.
Frontotemporal dementia and parkinsonism linked to chromosome 17 (FTDP-17) is a familial neurological disorder exhibiting autosomal dominant inheritance.
To evaluate the usefulness of tau proteins as biological markers in the diagnosis of dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT), we analyzed the concentration of tau proteins in 253 cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples from patients with or without neurological disorders.