Recently, a research team led by Prof. LEI Hongxing at Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, conducted comprehensive analyses on five published datasets concerning AD blood transcriptome, and further revealed the characteristic perturbation of cellular functional units, including up-regulation of environmental responses (immune response, survival/death signaling and cellular recycling) and down-regulation of core metabolism (energy metabolism and translation/splicing). This characteristic perturbation starts at the mild cognitive impairment (MCI) stage or even earlier, thus valuable for early diagnosis. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most dominant form of dementia among elderly people. Since no cure for AD will be available in the foreseeable future, early diagnosis becomes especially important. Because peripheral blood is easily accessible, relatively non-invasive, and rich of information regarding the health condition of the body, blood transcriptome has emerged as a potential resource for the discovery of biomarkers for AD. However, the validity of blood transcriptome in the early diagnosis of AD has yet to be extensively tested. In this work, Prof. LEI and his research team compared five studies of AD blood transcriptome, and further revealed the characteristic perturbation of blood transcriptome in AD, including up-regulation of environmental responses and down-regulation of core metabolism. This characteristic perturbation was found to be unique to AD based on the comparison with blood transcriptome from other neurological disorders and complex diseases. More importantly, similar perturbation was observed in both AD and MCI groups. This perturbation pattern was further validated in an independent microarray experiment in a small Chinese cohort. In addition, the potential effect of aging and life style on blood transcriptome was also discussed. Prof. LEI indicated that “This transformation of the blood transcriptome in AD is an integrated part of the disease mechanism and has potential to serve as a reliable biomarker for assisting the early diagnosis as well as monitoring purpose.” Paper link: http://iospress.metapress.com/content/3685x227k52688p6/?p=f7d376bf4c6043a3b046924150a67243&pi=1 Perturbation of the blood transcriptome in two selected studies on Alzheimer’s disease. (Image by LEI's group) Contact: Prof. LEI Hongxing Email: leihx@big.ac.cn 
