Optimized Pre-analytical Handling Protocol for Blood-Based Biomarkers of Alzheimer’s Disease

The therapeutic management of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has been hindered by poor diagnostic accuracy. As such, there is an unmet clinical need for tools that can detect and diagnose the disease in its early stages. Compared with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)-based biomarkers or positron emission tomography (PET), the use of reliable blood-based biomarkers could offer an accessible and minimally invasive method of streamlining diagnosis in the clinical setting. However, the influence of pre-analytical processing and sample handling parameters on the accurate measurement of protein biomarkers is well established, especially for AD CSF-based biomarkers. In this chapter, we provide recommendations for an optimal sample handling protocol for the analysis of blood-based biomarkers specifically for amyloid pathology in AD.