Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease with no effective treatment. One current view is that ALS is a multifactorial heterogeneous disease, in which a variety of pathological processes lead to a single end result – the death of motoneurons in the brain and spinal cord. Modern diagnostic criteria and the classification of ALS do not take into account the entire heterogeneity of the disease. Despite the development of molecular neurobiology, neurophysiology, and genetics, as well as significant progress in understanding the pathogenesis of ALS, the disease is diagnosed mainly on the basis of clinical manifestations. Recent years have seen a number of promising drugs fail to prove their efficacy in clinical trials. Some researchers attribute these failures to the variability of ALS, the inclusion of patients in studies who are already at the late stages of disease, the lack of use of biomarkers in patient selection, and pharmacodynamic evaluations of potential drugs. Study and implementation of biomarkers in clinical practice may help solve these problems. The present article discusses biomarkers detected in biological fluids of the human body.
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Translated from Zhurnal Nevrologii i Psikhiatrii imeni S. S. Korsakova, Vol. 122, No. 5, Iss. 1, pp. 30–35, May, 2022.
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Khabibrakhmanov, A.N., Mukhamedyarov, M.A. & Bogdanov, E.I. Biomarkers for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Neurosci Behav Physi 52, 1348–1353 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11055-023-01365-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11055-023-01365-0