Tau in cerebrospinal fluids: establishment of the sandwich ELISA with antibody specific to the repeat sequence in tau.

Clinical diagnosis for Alzheimer's disease (AD) is provided by the criteria of DSMIV and clinical progress in addition to imaging analysis with MRI after negative screening. The final exclusive diagnosis is confirmed by the neuropathological findings of neurofibrillary tangles and senile plaques in autopsy brains. We developed a new ELISA system to measure the amount of tau in cerebrospinal fluids (CSF) using phosphorylation-independent and sequence-specific antibodies. The present ELISA was sensitive enough to detect tau in CSF of normal subjects. The amount of tau was significantly elevated in CSF of AD subjects compared with those of normal subjects and subjects with dementia of cerebrovascular disease, suggesting that tau in CSF reflects the massive and continuous neuronal cell death in the AD brain. In conclusion, we established an ELISA system which enabled us to detect tau in CSF and demonstrated that tau was significantly and specifically elevated in CSF of AD subjects. This assay system can provide us with a potent diagnostic tool for clinical AD.