OBJECTIVES With over 35 million cases worldwide, Alzheimer's disease (AD) represents the main cause of dementia. The differentiation of AD from other types of dementia is challenging and its early diagnosis is complicated. The established biomarkers are not only based on the invasive collection of cerebrospinal fluid, but also lack sufficient sensitivity and specificity. Therefore, much current effort is aimed at the identification of new biomarkers of AD in peripheral blood. DESIGN AND METHODS We focused on blood-based analyses using chiroptical spectroscopy (Raman optical activity, electronic circular dichroism) supplemented with conventional vibrational spectroscopy (infrared, Raman) and metabolomics (high-performance liquid chromatography with a high-resolution mass detection). RESULTS This unique approach enabled us to identify the spectral pattern of AD and variations in metabolite levels. Subsequent linear discriminant analysis of the spectral data resulted in differentiation between the AD patients and control subjects. CONCLUSIONS It may be stated that this less invasive approach has strong potential for the identification of disease-related changes within essential plasmatic biomolecules and metabolites.

中文翻译：

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通过光谱学和代谢组学研究基于血液的阿尔茨海默氏病分子标记。

目的阿尔茨海默氏病（AD）是全世界痴呆症的主要原因，在全球范围内有3500万例。AD与其他类型的痴呆症的区别具有挑战性，其早期诊断非常复杂。建立的生物标志物不仅基于脑脊液的侵入性收集，而且缺乏足够的敏感性和特异性。因此，当前的许多努力旨在鉴定外周血中AD的新生物标记。设计与方法我们专注于使用手性光谱学（拉曼光学活性，电子圆二色性），常规振动光谱学（红外，拉曼光谱）和代谢组学（高效液相色谱仪，具有高分辨率质量检测）进行血液分析。结果这种独特的方法使我们能够识别AD的光谱模式和代谢物水平的变化。随后的光谱数据线性判别分析导致AD患者和对照组之间的区别。结论可以说，这种侵入性较小的方法在鉴定基本血浆生物分子和代谢产物内与疾病相关的变化方面具有强大的潜力。