Cerebrospinal fluid and blood exosomes as biomarkers for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; a systematic review

Background Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive and fatal motor neuron disease.

Due to the limited knowledge about potential biomarkers that help in early diagnosis and monitoring disease progression, today’s diagnoses are based on ruling out other diseases, neurography, and electromyography examination, which takes a time-consuming procedure.

Methods PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Web of Science were explored to extract articles published from January 2015 to June 2023.

In the searching strategy following keywords were included; amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, biomarkers, cerebrospinal fluid, serum, and plama.

Results A total number of 6 studies describing fluid-based exosomal biomarkers were included in this study.

Aggregated proteins including SOD1, TDP-43, pTDP-43, and FUS could be detected in the microvesicles (MVs).

Moreover, TDP-43 and NFL extracted from plasma exosomes could be used as prognostic biomarkers.

Also, downregulated miR-27a-3p detected through exoEasy Maxi and exoQuick Kit in the plasma could be measured as a diagnostic biomarker.

Eventually, the upregulated level of CORO1A could be used to monitor disease progression.

Conclusion Based on the results, each biomarker alone is insufficient to evaluate ALS.

CNS-derived exosomes contain multiple ALS-related biomarkers (SOD1, TDP-43, pTDP-43, FUS, and miRNAs) that are detectable in cerebrospinal fluid and blood is a proper alternation.

Exosome detecting kits listed as exoEasy, ExoQuick, Exo-spin, ME kit, ExoQuick Plus, and Exo-Flow, are helpful to reach this purpose.