Patent ID: 8383347

Claim:
A method of diagnosing or assessing risk for a neurodegenerative disease in an individual comprising the steps of: isolating immune cells, wherein the immune cells are T-cells, B-cells, or combinations thereof from the individual; isolating nucleic acids from the isolated immune cells, where the isolated nucleic acids encode for genes or proteins corresponding to the CDR3 region of the isolated immune cells; amplifying the CDR3 region of the nucleic acid; separating the amplified CDR3 fragments by length; determining a prevalence of the amplified CDR3 fragments to provide an intrafamily gene fragment length profile for the CDR3 region; and comparing the assay profile to a control intrafamily gene fragment length profile derived from blood cells of a healthy individual, to determine a presence or an absence of at least one gene fragment length that is more prevalent in the assay profile than the control profile, wherein the control profile is for the same TCR-CDR3 gene family as the assay profile; and wherein the presence of the more prevalent at least one gene fragment length CDR is indicative of the neurodegenerative disease; wherein the neurodegenerative disease is Alzheimer's disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment, or Parkinson's disease.