It’s becoming pretty clear that when we start showing elevated levels of GFAP or other astrocytic markers in the adult blood stream, it’s an indication that something is going wrong.
Work has been done which correlates GFAP level as a biomarker for dementias (from Alzheimer’s to vascular and everything in between), most cancers, renal and hepatic function, systemic viral infection from AIDS to Zika, and even respiratory function.
When we start seeing changes to GFAP it’s a good sign that the immune system is an unhappy camper and microglia/T’s are wrecking shit.
A potential problem with this is that in the earliest stages of change, individuals would still appear to be healthy by current clinical evaluation methods. Could easily be pushback from insurance companies not wanting to pay for “early” treatment or patients not wanting to be subjected to “early” treatment when the symptoms aren’t readily apparent.
Also, we have more work to do in order to get specificity on exactly which region is going haywire, something likely requiring genetic analysis instead of a simpler panel. The cheapest way to do this would tell us roughly if something is going wrong, and we might be able to test for general region, but more would require another level of testing.
And because they would appear “healthy” when the biomarker popped, it would be impossible to tell the difference between a false positive/negative and correct result until the longitudinal data started rolling in.
All that being said, I think it might be a tremendous benefit across the board if we did do serum testing for GFAP levels, and might need to look into how to facilitate this.
Extending on this a bit further, all “organs” and “nuclei” require astrocytes for CPG clock synchronization, from the heart to the gall bladder. The assumption here is that “clock dysfunction” is a universal biomarker for health in humans.
Also, should note that we’d have to do this longitudinally, because GFAP levels will rise naturally as part of the aging process. We’d have to establish a baseline for each individual and be measuring rates of change rather than following a guideline. And we know how much doctors love guidelines.
Another note, “GFAP” here doesn’t mean GFAP only, it means all astrocyte specific markers.
Serological biomarkers in autoimmune GFAP astrocytopathy
Characterizing factors influencing baseline plasma biomarkers for sport-related concussion in youth
Recursive Feature Elimination-based Biomarker Identification for Open Neural Tube Defects – This feels kinda icky.