Scientific article
Case report
English

Serum Progranulin Levels in Patients with Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration and Alzheimer's Disease : Detection of GRN Mutations in a Spanish Cohort

Published inJournal of Alzheimer's disease, vol. 31, no. 3, p. 581-591
Publication date2012-08-22
Abstract

Progranulin gene (GRN) mutations cause frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) with TDP43-positive inclusions, although its clinical phenotype is heterogeneous and includes patients classified as behavioral variant-FTLD (bvFTLD), progressive non-fluent aphasia (PNFA), corticobasal syndrome, Alzheimer's disease (AD), or Parkinson's disease (PD). Our main objective was to study if low serum progranulin protein (PGRN) levels may detect GRN mutations in a Spanish cohort of patients with FTLD or AD. Serum PGRN levels were measured in 112 subjects: 17 bvFTLD, 20 PNFA, 4 semantic dementia, 34 sporadic AD, 9 AD-PSEN1 mutation carriers, 10 presymptomatic-PSEN1 mutation carriers, and 18 control individuals. We detected 5 patients with PGRN levels below 94 ng/mL: two of them had a clinical diagnosis of bvFTLD, two of PNFA, and one of AD. The screening for GRN mutations detected two probable pathogenic mutations (p.C366fsX1 and a new mutation: p.V279GfsX5) in three patients and one mutation of unclear pathogenic nature (p.C139R) in one patient. The other patient showed a normal GRN sequence but carried a PRNP gene mutation. We observed no differences in serum PGRN levels between controls (mean = 145.5 ng/mL, SD = 28.5) and the other neurodegenerative diseases, except for the carriers of pathological GRN gene mutations (mean = 50.5 ng/mL, SD = 21.2). Null GRN mutation carriers also showed lower serum PGRN levels than the patient who was a carrier of p.C139R (92.3 ng/mL) and the one who was a carrier of the PRNP mutation (76.9 ng/mL). In conclusion, we detected GRN null mutations in patients with severely reduced serum PGRN levels, but not in patients with slightly reduced PGRN levels.

Keywords
  • Alzheimer’s disease
  • Biomarker
  • Exon skipping
  • Frameshift
  • Frontotemporal lobar degeneration
  • Mutation
  • Progranulin
  • Serum
  • Splicing
Affiliation entities Not a UNIGE publication
Research groups
Citation (ISO format)
ANTONELL, Anna et al. Serum Progranulin Levels in Patients with Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration and Alzheimer’s Disease : Detection of GRN Mutations in a Spanish Cohort. In: Journal of Alzheimer’s disease, 2012, vol. 31, n° 3, p. 581–591. doi: 10.3233/jad-2012-112120
Main files (1)
Article (Published version)
accessLevelRestricted
Identifiers
Journal ISSN1387-2877
23views
0downloads

Technical informations

Creation31/01/2025 01:30:36
First validation22/04/2025 09:36:57
Update22/04/2025 09:36:57
Status update22/04/2025 09:36:57
Last indexation22/04/2025 09:36:58
All rights reserved by Archive ouverte UNIGE and the University of GenevaunigeBlack