Human salivary Raman fingerprint as biomarker for the diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Abstract

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease leading to progressive and irreversible muscle atrophy. The diagnosis of ALS is time-consuming and complex, with the clinical and neurophysiological evaluation accompanied by monitoring of progression and a long procedure for the discrimination of similar neurodegenerative diseases. The delayed diagnosis strongly slows the potential development of adequate therapies and the time frame for a prompt intervention. The discovery of new biomarkers could improve the disease diagnosis, as well as the therapeutic and rehabilitative effectiveness and monitoring of the pathological progression. In this work saliva collected from 19 patients with ALS, 10 affected by Parkinson's disease, 10 affected by Alzheimer's disease and 10 healthy subjects, was analysed using Raman spectroscopy, optimizing the parameters for detailed and reproducible spectra. The statistical multivariate analysis of the data revealed a significant difference between the groups, allowing the discrimination of the disease onset. Correlation of Raman data revealed a direct relationship with paraclinical scores, identifying multifactorial biochemical modifications related to the pathology. The proposed approach showed a promising accuracy in ALS onset discrimination, using a fast and sensitive procedure that can make more efficient the diagnostic procedure and the monitoring of therapeutic and rehabilitative processes in ALS.

COVID-19 salivary Raman fingerprint: innovative approach for the detection of current and past SARS-CoV-2 infections

“…The salivary Raman analysis was carried out following and slightly modifying the analytical protocol developed and validated by our group, leading to the observation of the whole biochemical pattern of saliva 15 . The sample preparation procedure was reduced avoiding the filtration step, making in this way the analysis faster, cheaper and more informative, modifying consecutively the Raman acquisition parameters.…”

“…These techniques have already proved their applicability in the diagnosis of infections at the point-of-care, with promising results also for early diagnosis and monitoring of multiple human diseases 14 . Besides the application in cell and tissue analysis for cancer detection, RS has demonstrated its reliability and promising applicability also in the analysis of complex biological samples like saliva for disease detection and monitoring 15 . The use of saliva as substrate for Raman analysis has demonstrated unparalleled advantages related mainly to the limited sample processing required, the negligible invasiveness of sample collection, coupled to the multitude of molecules and disease biomarkers that can be investigated for clinical purposes 16 .…”

The Collagen-Based Medical Device MD-Tissue Acts as a Mechanical Scaffold Influencing Morpho-Functional Properties of Cultured Human Tenocytes

“…Sample preparation was conducted depositing a 5 µL drop on a Calcium Fluoride (CaFl 2 ) disk, dried overnight at room temperature. The data processing procedure was performed following and adapting the protocol reported by Carlomagno et al [ 21 ]. Briefly, all the spectra were fit with a third-degree polynomial baseline, considering 68 baseline points, and consecutively normalized by a unit vector.…”

Promoting identification of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis based on label‐free plasma spectroscopy

“…In our previous study, we observed that the SERS spectra of ALS patients with short‐duration group (≤3 years) were significantly different from long‐duration group (>3 years), and the metabolisms of glucose, amino acid, nucleic acid, and antioxidant were highly correlated with disease progression 8 . Recently, Carlomagno et al also reported that salivary Raman spectra could be a potential biomarker for ALS in a small sample size of late‐stage ALS patients, which provided additional evidence that SERS spectroscopy could be a useful tool for the diagnosis of ALS 9 . For the time being, no study has been reported to compare the plasma SERS spectra between ALS patients and healthy controls, and the ALS‐relevant SERS bands have not been identified.…”

“…8 Recently, Carlomagno et al also reported that salivary Raman spectra could be a potential biomarker for ALS in a small sample size of late-stage ALS patients, which provided additional evidence that SERS spectroscopy could be a useful tool for the diagnosis of ALS. 9 For the time being, no study has been reported to compare the plasma SERS spectra between ALS patients and healthy controls, and the ALS-relevant SERS bands have not been identified. We analyzed the plasma-nanoparticle complexes-based SERS features in ALS patients and healthy controls, aiming to search for specific SERS markers that could serve as potential indicator of ALS.…”