Fig. 1

a DLS-detected size distributions of particles in CSF samples from five representative non-AD (blue) and five representative AD patients (red). b Box plots reporting the DLS LSI values derived from large species in all non-AD and AD CSFs (*P < 0.05, MWT). c Box plots reporting the Ca²⁺-derived fluorescence values in all non-AD and AD CSFs (***P < 0.001, MWT). d Confocal microscopic images showing the intracellular Ca²⁺ levels (green) in SH-SY5Y cells treated with the same CSFs as in a. Untreated cells and cells treated with ionomycin are negative and positive controls, respectively. e Scatter plots for intracellular Ca²⁺ levels versus LSI from large protein species. Horizontal and vertical lines indicate the thresholds t* derived from optimization of the Youden’s indexes of the two shown parameters. f ROC curves of the two parameters with AUC values. g–j Scatter plots of the indicated classical and novel biomarkers. Information as in e