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Publications (85)
Background and Objectives
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease of unknown etiology and poorly understood pathophysiology. There is no specific biomarker either for diagnosis or prognosis. The aim of our study was to investigate differentially expressed proteins in the CSF and serum from patients with ALS to determine t...
Background and Objectives
Myasthenia gravis (MG) is an autoimmune disease associated with comorbid thymoma in 10%–15% of cases. Cytotoxic T lymphocyte–associated antigen 4 (CTLA4) expressed by T cells downregulates T-cell–mediated immune response. Polymorphisms in the CTLA4 gene have been associated with the development of MG. In this context, we a...
Aims:
Amyloid Precursor Protein (APP) 𝛽-C-terminal fragment (𝛽CTF) may have a neurotoxic role in Alzheimer´s disease (AD). 𝛽CTF accumulates in the brains of patients with sporadic (SAD) and genetic forms of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Synapses degenerate early during the pathogenesis of AD. We studied whether the 𝛽CTF accumulates in synapses in SAD,...
A key pathological event in frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) is the alteration of the RNA metabolism. Despite this, no study has characterized the diversity of RNA species using high‐throughput sequencing approaches and correlated them with the main neuropathological hallmarks across FTLD subtypes. Total and small RNA sequencing was perform...
Background
Synapse degeneration is an early event in pathological frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). Consequently, a surrogate marker of synapse loss could be used to monitor early pathologic changes in patients with underlying FTLD. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship of antemortem cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of 8 sy...
Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the leading cause of dementia, has an estimated heritability of approximately 70%1. The genetic component of AD has been mainly assessed using genome-wide association studies, which do not capture the risk contributed by rare variants2. Here, we compared the gene-based burden of rare damaging variants in exome sequencing d...
Amyloid-beta 42 (Aβ42) and phosphorylated tau (pTau) levels in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) reflect core features of the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) more directly than clinical diagnosis. Initiated by the European Alzheimer & Dementia Biobank (EADB), the largest collaborative effort on genetics underlying CSF biomarkers was established, i...
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are biological nanoparticles secreted by all cells for cellular communication and waste elimination. They participate in a vast range of functions by acting on and transferring their cargos to other cells in physiological and pathological conditions. Given their presence in biofluids, EVs represent an excellent resource...
A key hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology is the intracellular accumulation of tau protein in the form of neurofibrillary tangles across large-scale networks of the human brain cortex. Currently, it is still unclear how tau accumulates within specific cortical systems and whether in situ genetic traits play a role in this circuit-based p...
The most frequent genetic cause of frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is the hexanucleotide repeat expansion in C9orf72. An important neuropathological hallmark associated with this mutation is the accumulation of the phosphorylated form of TAR (trans‐activation response element) DNA‐binding protein 43...
Amyloid-beta 42 (Aβ42) and phosphorylated tau (pTau) levels in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) reflect core features of the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) more directly than clinical diagnosis. Initiated by the European Alzheimer & Dementia Biobank (EADB), the largest collaborative effort on genetics underlying CSF biomarkers was established, i...
Background
Previous studies linked disease-progression variables such as age at onset or survival to both genetic, and non-genetic factors in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients.
Objective
The aim of this study was to assess how genetic and non genetic factors act as modifiers of age at onset and survival and in a cohort of 753 PD patients, and to d...
Background
Cortical mean diffusivity is a novel imaging metric sensitive to early changes in neurodegenerative syndromes. Higher cortical mean diffusivity values reflect microstructural disorganization and have been proposed as a sensitive biomarker that might antedate macroscopic cortical changes. We aimed to test the hypothesis that cortical mean...
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) lie at opposing ends of a clinical, genetic, and neuropathological continuum. In the last decade, it has become clear that cognitive and behavioral changes in patients with ALS are more frequent than previously recognized. Significantly, these non-motor features can im...
Background
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative movement disorder affecting 1–5% of the general population for which neither effective cure nor early diagnostic tools are available that could tackle the pathology in the early phase. Here we report a multi-stage procedure to identify candidate genes likely involved in the etiopathogenesis...
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) clinical diagnosis is challenged by the variable correspondence between the clinical syndrome and underlying neuropathological changes, the phenotypic overlap with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and the lack of pathophysiologic diagnostic biomarkers. As synapse degeneration is an early event in pathological frontotemporal lo...
Background:
Damaging rare variants in the TREM2, SORL1 and ABCA7 genes have been associated with an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's Disease (AD) with odds ratios that were not observed since the identification of the main AD genetic risk factor, the APOE-ε4 allele. Here, we aimed to identify additional AD-associated genes by investigating...
Background:
Alterations in the RNA metabolism represent a key pathological event in FTLD. Despite this, no study has characterized the diversity of brain RNA species (coding, non-coding and small RNAs) using high-throughput sequencing approaches.
Method:
Total and small RNA sequencing was performed to study all RNA species from the frontal corte...
We report the neuropathological examination of a patient with Alzheimer's disease (AD) treated for 38 months with low doses of the BACE-1 inhibitor verubecestat. Brain examination showed small plaque size, reduced dystrophic neurites around plaques and reduced synaptic-associated Aβ compared with a group of age-matched untreated sporadic AD (SAD) c...
Background. Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) clinical diagnosis is challenged by the variable correspondence between the clinical syndrome and underlying neuropathological changes, the phenotypic overlap with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and the lack of pathophysiologic diagnostic biomarkers. As synapse degeneration is an early event in pathological front...
Background Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative movement disorder affecting 1–5% of the general population for which neither effective cure nor early diagnostic tools are available that could tackle the pathology in the early phase. Here we report a multi-stage procedure to identify candidate genes likely involved in the etiopathogenesis...
Importance
The presence of atrophy on magnetic resonance imaging can support the diagnosis of the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), but reproducible measurements are lacking.
Objective
To assess the diagnostic and prognostic utility of 6 visual atrophy scales (VAS) and the Magnetic Resonance Parkinsonism Index (MRPI).
Design,...
Importance
Substantial genome-wide association study (GWAS) work in Parkinson disease (PD) has led to the discovery of an increasing number of loci shown reliably to be associated with increased risk of disease. Improved understanding of the underlying genes and mechanisms at these loci will be key to understanding the pathogenesis of PD.
Objectiv...
Importance Substantial genome-wide association study (GWAS) work in Parkinson disease (PD) has led to the discovery of an increasing number of loci shown reliably to be associated with increased risk of disease. Improved understanding of the underlying genes and mechanisms at these loci will be key to understanding the pathogenesis of PD. / Objecti...
Recent reports indicated that extremely rare protein truncating or missense variants in the SORL1 gene are associated with an increased risk and possibly a causative effect on developing Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Here, we investigated the relationship between the predicted variant pathogenicity and the age at AD onset (a.a.o.) in the largest whole...
With the development of next‐generation sequencing technologies, it is possible to identify rare genetic variants that influence the risk of complex disorders. To date, whole exome sequencing (WES) strategies have shown that specific clusters of damaging rare variants in the TREM2, SORL1 and ABCA7 genes are associated with an increased risk of deve...
The most frequent genetic cause of Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is the hexanucleotide repeat expansion in the C9orf72 gene. Until now, three different mechanisms have been proposed to explain its pathogenic effects: i) loss of function of the C9orf72 protein, ii) toxic gain of function from sense and antisen...
TAR DNA binding protein 43 (TDP‐43) is an RNA binding protein with a central role in transcription regulation. Evaluation of the transcriptome in affected brain tissues with aggregated TDP‐43 will allow us to better understand the pathological processes occurring in a variety of neurodegenerative disorders. We performed massive RNA sequencing in th...
We present the clinical and neuropathological findings of a patient with early onset Alzheimer's dementia (AD), heterozygous carrier of the rare Apolipoprotein E Christchurch (APOEch) variant. The patient did not harbor any pathogenic mutation in known Mendelian genes related to AD or other neurodegenerative disorders. A sibling of this patient, al...
Objective:
We sought to characterise C9orf72 expansions in relation to genetic ancestry and age at onset (AAO), and to use these parameters to discriminate the behavioural from the language variant syndrome, in a large pan-European cohort of frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) cases.
Methods:
We evaluated expansions frequency in the entire...
Objective:
We aimed to characterize cortical macro- and micro-structure of behavioral and cognitive changes along the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) - frontotemporal dementia (FTD) continuum.
Methods:
We prospectively recruited 88 participants with a three-Tesla MRI structural and diffusion-weighted imaging sequences: 31 ALS, 20 bvFTD, and...
Objective
To identify transcriptomic changes, neuropathologic correlates, and cellular subpopulations in the motor cortex of sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Methods
We performed massive RNA sequencing of the motor cortex of patients with ALS (n = 11) and healthy controls (HCs; n = 8) and analyzed gene expression alterations, differen...
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a clinical, genetic and pathological heterogeneous group of neurodegenerative diseases. In this study, we investigated the role of APOƐ4, rs5848 in GRN and rs1042522 in TP53 gene as disease risk factors and/or phenotype modifiers in 440 frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients, including 175 C9orf72 expansion carriers...
The genetic component of Alzheimers disease (AD) has been mainly assessed using Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS), which do not capture the risk contributed by rare variants. Here, we compared the gene-based burden of rare damaging variants in exome sequencing data from 32,558 individuals —16,036 AD cases and 16,522 controls— in a two-stage an...
The IPDGC (The International Parkinson Disease Genomics Consortium) and EADB (Alzheimer Disease European DNA biobank) are listed correctly as an author to the article, however, they were incorrectly listed more than once.
A circular-transcriptome-wide study has recently linked differential expression of circular RNAs (circRNAs) in brain tissue with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We aimed at replicating the major findings in an independent series of sporadic and familial AD. We also included cases with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), comprising brain specimens w...
The acquisition and evolution of speech production, discourse and communication can be negatively impacted by brain malformations. We describe, for the first time, a case of developmental dynamic dysphasia (DDD) in a right-handed adolescent boy (subject D) with cortical malformations involving language-eloquent regions (inferior frontal gyrus) in b...
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease for which the pathophysiological mechanisms of motor neuron loss are not precisely clarified. Environmental and epigenetic mechanisms such as microRNAs (miRNAs) could have a role in disease progression. We studied the expression pattern of miRNAs in ALS serum from 60 patients and 29...
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating neurodegenerative disease characterized by the degeneration of upper and lower motor neurons. A major neuropathological finding in ALS is the coexistence of glial activation and aggregation of the phosphorylated transactive response DNA-binding protein 43-kDa (pTDP43) in the motor cortex at the e...
Molecular genetics has been an invaluable tool to help understand the molecular basis of neurodegenerative dementias. In this review, we provide an overview of the genetic architecture underlying some of the most prevalent causes of dementia, including Alzheimer's dementia, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, Lewy body dementia, and prion diseases....
Background: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in Parkinson's disease have increased the scope of biological knowledge about the disease over the past decade. We aimed to use the largest aggregate of GWAS data to identify novel risk loci and gain further insight into the causes of Parkinson's disease. / Methods: We did a meta-analysis of 17 dat...
We analyzed the frequency of intermediate alleles (IAs) in the ATXN1, ATXN2, and HTT genes in several neurodegenerative diseases. The study included 1126 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), 440 patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), and 610 patients with Parkinson's disease. In all cohorts, we genotyped ATXN1 and ATXN2 CAG repeats. In add...
Background:
The Iberian Peninsula stands out as having variable levels of population admixture and isolation, making Spain an interesting setting for studying the genetic architecture of neurodegenerative diseases.
Objectives:
To perform the largest PD genome-wide association study restricted to a single country.
Methods:
We performed a GWAS f...
Introduction:
The SPIN (Sant Pau Initiative on Neurodegeneration) cohort is a multimodal biomarker platform designed for neurodegenerative disease research following an integrative approach.
Methods:
Participants of the SPIN cohort provide informed consent to donate blood and cerebrospinal fluid samples, receive detailed neurological and neurops...
Circular RNAs (circRNA) are evolutionary conserved non-coding RNAs resulting from the backsplicing of precursor messengers. Recently, a circular-transcriptome-wide study of circRNA in brain tissue from patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) has revealed a striking association between the expression of circRNA and AD pathological diagnosis. In the pre...
The genetic variant rs72824905-G (minor allele) in the PLCG2 gene was previously associated with a reduced Alzheimer’s disease risk (AD). The role of PLCG2 in immune system signaling suggests it may also protect against other neurodegenerative diseases and possibly associates with longevity. We studied the effect of the rs72824905-G on seven neurod...
Background: The Iberian peninsula stands out as having variable levels of population admixture and isolation, making Spain an interesting setting for studying the genetic architecture of neurodegenerative diseases.
Objectives: To perform the largest Parkinson disease (PD) genome-wide association study (GWAS) restricted to a single country.
Methods:...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0212647.].
Objective:
Mutations in CD59 cause CIDP-like polyneuropathy in children with inherited chronic hemolysis. We hypothesized that mutations in CD59 might be found in a subset of sporadic CIDP patients.
Methods:
35 patients from two centers, fulfilling the EFNS/PNS diagnostic criteria for CIDP were included. CD59 coding region was amplified by PCR a...
Objective
Mutations in CD59 cause CIDP-like polyneuropathy in children with inherited chronic hemolysis. We hypothesized that mutations in CD59 might be found in a subset of sporadic CIDP patients.
Methods
5 patients from two centers, fulfilling the EFNS/PNS diagnostic criteria for CIDP were included. CD59 coding region was amplified by PCR and Sa...
Huntington's disease (HD) is an autosomal progressive neurodegenerative disorder caused by the expansion of CAG repeats in the HTT gene. Intermediate alleles (IAs) are in the range of 27–35 repeats and have been associated to a normal phenotype. The aim of this work was to analyze the association between intermediate huntingtin CAG-repeat alleles (...
Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers have been extensively investigated in the Alzheimer's disease (AD) field, and are now being applied in clinical practice. CSF amyloid-beta (Aβ1-42), total tau (t-tau), and phosphorylated tau (p-tau) reflect disease pathology, and may be used as quantitative traits for genetic analyses, fostering the identificati...
Objective:
To investigate the clinical utility of 3 CSF biomarkers along the clinical spectrum of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
Methods:
We analyzed 3 CSF biomarkers: the soluble β-fragment of amyloid precursor protein (sAPPβ), YKL-40, and neurofilament light (NfL) in FTD (n = 86), ALS (n = 38), and a gro...
Aim:
To determine the motor phenotype and outcome in a clinically ascertained group of patients with motor neuron disease (MND) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
Methods:
This is an observational retrospective clinical study of patients fulfilling the clinical criteria for MND-FTD. A contemporary series of patients with amyotrophic lateral scle...
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are part of a clinical, pathological and genetic continuum.
Objectives
The purpose of the present study was to assess the mutation burden that is present in patients with concurrent ALS and FTD (ALS/FTD) not carrying the chromosome 9 open reading frame 72 (C9orf72) hexanucleotid...
Background:
Progranulin is implicated in frontotemporal dementia (FTD), but its role in other neurodegenerative disorders is unknown.
Objective:
To investigate the levels of progranulin (PGRN) in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in different neurodegenerative dementias and their correlation with levels in plasma in cognitively normal subjects.
Methods...
We report a biomarker and genetic evaluation of four patients with cerebral amyloid angiopathy-related inflammation (CAA-ri) treated with corticosteroids. Patients presented with focal symptomatology and cognitive impairment. MRI revealed cortical microbleeds and asymmetrical hyperintense white matter lesions (WML). Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomar...
The Tubulin Alpha 4a (TUBA4A) gene has been recently associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Interestingly, some of the mutation carriers were also diagnosed with frontotemporal degeneration (FTD) or mild cognitive impairment. With the aim to investigate the role of TUBA4A in FTD, we screened TUBA4A in a series of 814 FTD patients from Spain...
The MAPT H1 haplotype has been linked to several disorders, but its relationship with Alzheimer's disease (AD) remains controversial. A rare variant in MAPT (p.A152T) has been linked with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and AD. We genotyped H1/H2 and p.A152T MAPT in 11,572 subjects from Spain (4,327 AD, 563 FTD, 648 Parkinson's disease (PD), 84 progr...
In this study we found that patients with C9orf72 repeat expansion showed cerebellar and posterior brain hypometabolism as compared to bvFTD non-carriers. Our results suggest that impairment in cerebellar and parietal glucose metabolism may be a feature of some cases with the C9orf72 repeat expansion. Importantly, the two carriers of the C9orf72 re...
Mutations in the gene coding for Sequestosome 1 (SQSTM1) have been genetically associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Paget disease of bone. In the present study, we analyzed the SQSTM1 coding sequence for mutations in an extended cohort of 1,808 patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), ascertained within the Europea...
A non-synonymous genetic rare variant, rs75932628-T (p.R47H), in the TREM2 gene has recently been reported to be a strong genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Also, rare recessive mutations have been associated with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). We aimed to investigate the role of p.R47H variant in AD and FTD through a multi-center st...
About a half of patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) has deposition of phosphorylated TDP-43 protein (pTDP-43) in the brain. We studied pTDP-43 and total TDP-43 levels in plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in healthy controls and patients with FTD, including those carrying a repeat expansion in the C9orf72 gene or a mutation in GRN.
We inc...
