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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Jul 25.
Published in final edited form as: Proteomics Clin Appl. 2008 Sep 10;2(10-11):1484–1497. doi: 10.1002/prca.200800043

Table 1.

Cerebral spinal fluid versus serum/plasma for biomarker discovery

Advantages Disadvantages
Cerebral Spinal Fluid

  1. Proximity to region of disease,

  2. Less complex; easier to identify proteins low in abundance,

  3. Identification of peptides that are biologically active

  1. More invasive than blood draw,

  2. Less volume obtained at a given time,

  3. Contamination by blood-derived proteins
Serum/Plasma

  1. Easily accessible

  1. Poor representation of pathological state of CNS,

  2. Masking of low abundance proteins