Written by Dr. Ambika Tewari Edited by Dr. Gulin Oz
Neurofilament light chain could provide a reliable readout of how far an SCA3 patient’s disease has progressed
How often have you heard that the most effective way to treat a disorder is early intervention? In reality, “early” is not possible for many disorders because patients receive a diagnosis only after the appearance of symptoms. But what if there was a way we could tell that a patient will develop a disease – even before they have any symptoms? Thankfully, that’s exactly what researchers in the field of biomarkers are trying to do. Biomarkers are biological indicators that are not only present in patients before the manifestation of symptoms, but can also be used to measure disease progression. In the SCA field, there have been a recent series of articles that have shed light on a promising biomarker for SCA3.
Spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3), also known as Machado-Joseph Disease, is the most common dominantly-inherited ataxia. It is caused by an expansion of CAG repeats (a small segment of DNA that codes for the amino acid glutamine) in the ATXN3 gene. An important feature of SCA3, as well as in other spinocerebellar ataxias, is the progressive development of symptoms. Symptoms usually occur across decades, and can be divided into three major phases: asymptomatic, preclinical, and symptomatic. In the asymptomatic phase, there is no evidence of clinical symptoms (even though the patient has had the SCA-causing mutation since birth). In the preclinical stage, patients show unspecified neurological symptoms such as muscle cramps and/or mild movement abnormalities. By the symptomatic (i.e., clinical) stage, patients have significant difficulty walking.

Currently in SCA research, disease progression is measured using the Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia (SARA). A score of 3 or more on the SARA differentiates clinical and preclinical groups. Structural and functional brain imaging methods (such as MRI) also track the progressive nature of the disease, like the SARA, but give us a visual picture of changes in the brain. Together, these methods have provided the SCA community with important insights into the clinical spectrum of each specific disease and its rate of progression. And, with the exciting progress we have recently made in the realm of SCA3 therapeutics, a biomarker that is cost-effective and easy to measure (like in a blood test) could provide a convenient way to assess how effective a potential treatment is.
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