Discovery of human tear fluid biomarker by proteomic analysis
The present study was methodically structured with a two-pronged approach, encompassing both the discovery and verification stages. The discovery phase was tailored to pinpoint potential biomarkers, while the verification phase affirmed the expression levels of potential biomarkers using our proposed immunoassay. We utilized two distinct cohorts of human tear samples for the proteomic experiments: the discovery cohort and the verification cohort. All subjects received 18F-florbetaben PET imaging for amyloid-β measurement and were conducted Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Specifically, the discovery cohort was comprised of tear samples from 7 healthy controls (HC), 7 mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 7 AD participants, totaling 21 samples (Fig. 2a and Supplementary Table 1).
