Verwey NA, van der Flier WM, Blennow K, Clark C, Sokolow S, De Deyn PP, Galasko D, Hampel H, Hartmann T, Kapaki E, Lannfelt L, Mehta PD, Parnetti L, Petzold A, Pirttila T, Saleh L, Skinningsrud A, Swieten JC, Verbeek MM, Wiltfang J, Younkin S, Scheltens P, Blankenstein MA. A worldwide multicentre comparison of assays for cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers in Alzheimer's disease. Ann Clin Biochem. 2009 May;46(Pt 3):235-40. PubMed.

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  1. CSF levels of Aβ1-42, tau and p-tau can discriminate Alzheimer disease patients from controls or from patients with other types of dementia, and can identify incipient AD among patients with mild cognitive impairment (Hansson et al., 2006; Blennow et al., 2003). However, large differences are reported in absolute biomarker levels between centers (Sunderland et al., 2003), making it difficult to set up multi-center studies including multicenter treatment trials. To overcome this problem, external quality control assessment schemes (EQAS) are needed (Libeer et al., 2001). Our study describes the first worldwide EQAS for CSF biomarkers (20 different centres measured the same CSF samples), reporting relatively high inter-center variations, especially for Aβ1-42 (>22 percent). Lower inter-center variability (

    References:

    Hansson O, Zetterberg H, Buchhave P, Londos E, Blennow K, Minthon L. Association between CSF biomarkers and incipient Alzheimer's disease in patients with mild cognitive impairment: a follow-up study. Lancet Neurol. 2006 Mar;5(3):228-34. PubMed.

    Blennow K, Hampel H. CSF markers for incipient Alzheimer's disease. Lancet Neurol. 2003 Oct;2(10):605-13. PubMed.

    Sunderland T, Linker G, Mirza N, Putnam KT, Friedman DL, Kimmel LH, Bergeson J, Manetti GJ, Zimmermann M, Tang B, Bartko JJ, Cohen RM. Decreased beta-amyloid1-42 and increased tau levels in cerebrospinal fluid of patients with Alzheimer disease. JAMA. 2003 Apr 23-30;289(16):2094-103. PubMed.

    Libeer JC. Role of external quality assurance schemes in assessing and improving quality in medical laboratories. Clin Chim Acta. 2001 Jul 20;309(2):173-7. PubMed.

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