Objective: This study aims to identify specific micro-RNA (miRNA) patterns in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and to compare them with age-matched controls. By this we anticipate to identify a specific biomarker profile allowing an early diagnosis and improved differential diagnosis of PD.

Background: Today, the diagnosis of PD is based purely on clinical features. But particularly in the early stage of the disease, symptoms of patients with idiopathic PD and atypical Parkinsonian syndromes can be very similar. miRNAs have been identified as post-transcriptional regulators of mRNA and recently have been shown to be useful biomarkers, e.g. in different types of cancer. miRNAs from serum or plasma in PD vs. control patients were identified to be differentially regulated, but showed a low predictive value. Studies comparing CSF-derived miRNA from Alzheimer’s disease and control patients showed an accuracy of up to 95%. So far, data on CSF-derived miRNA from PD patients is limited.

Methods: In an ongoing prospective cohort study we collect CSF from patients with PD (n=75), atypical PD (n=31), and age-matched control patients (n=92). The CSF collection is repeated one year later to correlate data with disease progression. We then compared three different RNA isolation methods to optimize RNA yield and reduce contamination levels: MirVana Paris Kit, TRIzol RS, exosome isolation by ultracentrifugation and TRIzol treatment.

Results: Our results show that ultracentrifugation-based exosome isolation is the method of choice to obtain highest RNA yields with lowest levels of contamination. We show that sufficient quality RNA can be obtained from CSF volumes usually obtained in routine diagnostic punctures. In a next step, we will analyse the RNA of patients CSF by small RNA sequencing.

Conclusions: Sufficient amounts of RNA can be obtained from routine lumbar punctures of PD patients. We expect that the analysis of our samples will yield biomarker profiles allowing to establish an early diagnosis and improve differential diagnosis of PD. The analysis of two individual miRNA profiles from the same patient one year apart are expected to identify markers for disease progression.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/micro-rna-in-cerebrospinal-fluid-as-a-biomarker-for-early-diagnosis-differential-diagnosis-and-prognostic-marker-in-parkinsons-disease/