Affiliations: [a] Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy A, Hall State Hospital, Austria
| [b] Institute of Legal Medicine and Core Facility Metabolomics, Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria
| [c] Laboratory of Psychiatry and Experimental Alzheimer’s Research, Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria
Correspondence:
[*]
Correspondence to: Christian Humpel, PhD, Laboratory of Psychiatry and Experimental Alzheimer’s Research, Anichstrasse 35, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria. Tel.: +43 512 504 23712; Fax: +43 512 504 23713; E-mail: christian.humpel@i-med.ac.at.
Abstract: Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is still a challenge. Salivary analysis could produce an easily accessible and inexpensive possibility to study metabolic changes in AD. In the present pilot study, we show for the first time using targeted metabolomics that acyl-alkyl phosphatidylcholines (PCae C34:1-2; PCae C36:1-2-3; PCaeC38:1c3; PCae C40:2-3) are significantly reduced in saliva of AD patients (n = 25) compared to healthy controls (n = 25). Saliva levels of PCae C36Λ1-2-3) were also decreased in patients with mild cognitive impairment (n = 25). No changes were seen for saliva diacyl-phosphatidylcholines, lyso-acyl-phosphatidylcholines, and sphinogomyelins. These data suggest specific lipid changes in the saliva of AD patients, thus salivary measures could establish new biomarkers. However, these preliminary results have to be established in larger scale studies.
