Neurochemical dementia diagnostics: State of the art and research perspectives

The aim of this review is to present current state of the art on the field of routine neurochemical dementia diagnostics (NDD) with a focus on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers: amyloid beta peptides, tau protein, and its phosphorylated form (pTau). After several years of experience, it is reasonably to postulate that CSF biomarkers analysis is an increasingly important tool within the early and differential diagnosis of dementia syndromes. Actual research activities are briefly discussed, too, including: (i) possibilities and limitations of the diagnosis of incipient Alzheimer's disease in preclinical stages (e.g., mild cognitive impairment), (ii) the role of multiplexing technologies in dementia biomarkers research, (iii) the role of biomarkers in differential diagnosis of dementia syndromes, (iv) approaches to improve analytical performance of available methods, and (v) research activities to identify dementia biomarkers in blood.