Increasing the reproducibility of fluid biomarker studies in neurodegenerative studies

There are many potential sources of poor reproducibility for biomarker studies. These include cohort-related factors, pre-analytical factors, analytical and kit-related factors, biotemporal variability of the measured markers, insufficient statistical methods, lack of proper validation, and factors related to the decisions to submit or accept publications for publishing. Several of these factors contribute to poor reproducibility by either introducing imprecision (a random error) of measurements (increasing “variability”—the closeness of agreement between biomarker measurements obtained by replicate measurements on the same or similar objects under specified condition²²), or introducing bias (a systematic error) of measurements (reducing “accuracy”—the closeness of agreement between a biomarker measurement and the true value of the biomarker²²). We summarize examples of…