Inflammation Biomarkers in Huntington’s Disease

Neurodegenerative diseases share many features, such as inflammation. Accumulating evidence support the role of neuroinflammation in the pathogenesis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, and inflammatory markers are suggested important tools to identify disease risk, diagnose disease, monitor disease progression or treatment response, as well as predict clinical outcomes. In Huntington’s disease (HD) inflammatory processes, both centrally and peripherally, are suggested to contribute to pathology, and modulating the immune system may be a potential therapeutic strategy. Neuroinflammation has been shown to be an important factor and microglial activation can be detected before onset of clinical features. Central inflammatory processes are mirrored peripherally, and a peripheral low-grade immune response has been demonstrated in premanifest HD. Both direct and in-direct effects of mutant huntingtin within inflammatory cells have been demonstrated. As circulating markers of inflammation has been shown to mirror brain inflammatory changes in HD, this has raised the possibility that these markers could be useful as markers of disease features. This chapter aims to summarize current knowledge on biofluid immune markers and discuss how these markers may assist in understanding of HD pathology and aid in detection of new therapeutic targets.