Profiles of extracellular miRNA in cerebrospinal fluid and serum from patients with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases correlate with disease status and features of pathology

We profiled the miRNA contents from cerebrospinal fluid and serum (using next generation sequencing) from postmortem patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases and neurologically normal controls. All biofluids were cell-free and patient matched, there was one cerebrospinal fluid and one serum sample from each of 70 patients with Alzheimer's disease, 67 patients with Parkinson's disease and 78 age-similar controls. We correlated the miRNA changes with measurements of neuropathology such as plaques, tangles and Lewy bodies.