Mandal, Pravat K and Ersland, Lars (2019) Editorial: Predictive Imagable Biomarkers for Neurodegenerative and Neurodevelopmental Diseases. Front Neurol, 10 (583).

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Abstract

In the last four decades, tremendous economic and technological development has helped to improve the quality of life and average life span has increased substantially. As a consequence, the number of people with much higher age is increasing and reports of aging associated disorders are multiplying due to various neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s frontotemporal, dementia with Lewy body disease etc. The causal process of these neurodegenerative disorders is not known yet; however, oxidative stress is recognized to play an important role (1–3). At the same time, the number of cases with neurodevelopmental disorders [Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) (4), Epilepsy (5) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (6)] is increasing rapidly in the early part of the life due to multifactorial reasons. Two major health related issues in two distinct age groups need urgent attention to identify the causal process and subsequently a therapeutic development for cure. The advancements in different imaging techniques [e.g., Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), MR Spectroscopy (MRS), functional MRI (fMRI), functional MRS, Magnetic Encephalography, Diffusion Tensor Imaging etc.] provide various critical features for reliably predicting the individuals who will progress from asymptomatic pre-clinical phase to clinical phases. In this context, it is critical to investigate the factors which may impact the brain microenvironment these could trigger the early causal processes. In neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders, the roles of various neurochemicals receptors or antioxidants and their abnormal modulations are getting huge attention for more in-depth research. Recently it was discovered that brain microenvironment has the role to modulate the two distinct conformations of glutathione (GSH), a major antioxidant involved in neutralizing harmful radicals (Figure 1). GSH exists in two conformational states (extended and closed form) in the brain (7, 10, 11). It is therefore paramount to identify novel imagable diagnostic biomarkers involving antioxidants, neurotransmitters and physiological parameters that can aid in discovering the causal processes of these brain disorders and can be translated into clinical practices for simplified diagnostic tests and advocating appropriate lifestyle changes to delay the onset of symptoms. This special issue has a total of ten articles from various laboratories. Mandal and co-workers have developed a Hadoop-based big data framework (BHARAT) integrating non-invasive MRI, MRS as well as neuropsychological test outcomes to identify early diagnostic biomarkers of AD. The framework for AD incorporates the three “V”s (volume, variety and velocity) with advanced data mining, machine learning, and statistical modeling algorithms Sharma et al.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	Neurodegenerative Disorders Neuro-Oncological Disorders Neurocognitive Processes Neuronal Development and Regeneration Informatics and Imaging Genetics and Molecular Biology
Depositing User:	Dr. D.D. Lal
Date Deposited:	06 Sep 2019 05:33
Last Modified:	13 Dec 2021 09:50
URI:	http://nbrc.sciencecentral.in/id/eprint/510

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