Biomarkers in Neurodegenerative Diseases: Cortisol

Neurodegenerative diseases are characterized by progressive loss of cognitive function, dementia, and problems with movements. Identification of biomarkers during disease process, induce to an effective and early diagnostic test for neurodegenerative diseases. These biomarkers would allow presymptomatic disease detection of disease and would be valuable for monitoring the efficacy of disease. Cortisol is a biomarker used for stress evaluation and a potential neurodegenerative disease biomarker. Objective: The aim of this paper is to review systematically the scientific literature about evaluation to cortisol biomarker in neurodegenerative diseases. Methods: Systematic literature review on Pubmed, Medline and Scopus database with the keywords "cortisol biomarkers” and "neurodegenerative diseases". It was analyzed all existing articles (between 1988 and 2015). PRISMA criteria reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analyses were applied. The inclusion criteria were: cortisol biomarkers in neurodegenerative diseases diagnosis, presenting quantitative or qualitative results. It was excluded articles outside the scope of the subject and articles with unavailable information. Results: After applying the methodology, 14 scientific articles were included in the study. So, these studies were analyzed. Conclusions: This paper review based on the contribution of cortisol biomarkers to diagnose and treat neurodegenerative diseases. for neurodegenerative processes [1,10]. There is a need for additional and more sensitive biomarkers for the early and differential diagnosis of different neurodegenerative disease [6]. Identification of preclinical biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases has led to new insights concerning disease pathophysiology and time course and has disclosed some interesting parallels in these common neurodegenerative diseases. Body fluids, such as cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), serum, saliva, blood or urine, offer an attractive medium to biomarker analysis [5,10-15]. The firsts biochemical biomarkers of neurodegenerative diseases were: the proteins beta-amyloid (Aβ), total tau and its phosphorylated forms (p-tau) measured in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), but, these markers are dependent upon invasive lumbar puncture and therefore appear less amenable for high through screening of patients [11,13,15]. There is a pressing need for new biomarkers in more easily accessible body fluids such as peripheral blood [6,8,13]. Nowadays, recent studies prove that blood-based testing would be widely available, non-invasive, easy, economic and rapid to perform. In this review, we analyzed the paper of cortisol biomarker in neurodegenerative disease. Citation: Batista P, Pereira A (2016) Biomarkers in Neurodegenerative Diseases: Cortisol. J Mol Biomark Diagn 7: 277. doi:10.4172/2155-9929.1000277