Figure 1.

Schematic overview of invasive biomarkers. Different biomarkers have been used to detect early anatomical changes in the brains of people with mild cognitive impairment, including the atrophy of specific brain areas like the locus coeruleus or the hippocampus, and the presence of typical protein aggregates such as extracellular amyloid plaques or intracellular Tau-containing neurofibrillary tangles (upper panel). Additionally, biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-related degenerative processes like synaptic dysfunction, neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, or neuronal loss can be measured in the cerebrospinal fluid of AD patients. The detection of miRNAs represents a novel and promising tool for the early AD diagnosis (lower panel).