Some proteins in the blood could warn of dementia a decade before diagnosis

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-02-13 03:00

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Changes in the levels of specific proteins in the blood could predict a dementia diagnosis up to a decade early, according to international research. The team used data from the UK Biobank study to search for patterns in the blood of a large group of people who were followed up with for an average of 14 years. Looking at which participants went on to be diagnosed with dementia during the study, the researchers found four specific proteins that were consistently associated with dementia. They say they were able to create a model to predict the risk of a dementia diagnosis, and while it will need to be tested with a different group of participants, it could one day help predict dementia earlier.

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From: Springer Nature

Health: Protein markers may identify individuals at risk for dementia years before diagnosis

Plasma proteins that may be used to predict the risk of developing all-cause dementia (ACD), Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD) more than 10 years before diagnosis are reported in a study published in Nature Aging.

Previous studies have examined the role of plasma proteins as biomarkers for predicting long-term dementia risk in healthy adults, but many have focused on one or a small number of proteins or lacked a dataset as large as the UK Biobank. They have also neglected how these proteins may predict the onset of diseases such as ACD, AD or VaD over long spans of time (such as a decade). Large-scale studies with data on blood plasma biomarkers and specific dementias, and follow-up on a decadal scale, are therefore required.

Jin-Tai Yu, Jian-Feng Feng, Wei Cheng and colleagues performed a detailed study of UK Biobank proteome data to identify plasma biomarkers associated with dementia prediction and explore their potential to predict future ACD, AD and VaD. The authors included data from 52,645 participants without dementias in their study. Over the course of the follow up period (median 14.1 years), 1,417 participants were diagnosed with dementias (833 within 10 years (including 219 within 5 years) and 584 beyond 10 years). Of 1,463 plasma proteins included in the analysis, the authors found that GFAP, NEFL, GDF15 and LTBP2 were consistently associated with incident ACD, AD and VaD.

From this, Yu and co-authors produced a predictive model for ACD, AD and VaD risk over the course of 10 years. Proteins (such as GFAP) that were previously known to be associated with dementia were found to have high predictive value in the model. The authors also highlight that GFAP levels begin to change about 10 years before diagnosis, which raises the possibility that GFAP could be a potential biomarker for early risk assessment. However, Yu and colleagues note that this research has not been validated in an independent and external cohort.

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Journal/
conference: Nature Aging

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Fudan University, China

Funder: We thank all the participants and researchers from the UK Biobank. W.C. was funded by National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant no. 2023YFC3605400). J.T.-Y. was funded by grants from the Science and Technology Innovation 2030 Major Projects (grant no. 2022ZD0211600), National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 82071201, 92249305), Research Start-up Fund of Huashan Hospital (grant no. 2022QD002) and Excellence 2025 Talent Cultivation Program at Fudan University (grant no. 3030277001). J.F.-F. was funded by National Key R&D Program of China (grant nos. 2018YFC1312904, 2019YFA0709502), Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project (grant no. 2018SHZDZX01) and the 111 Project (no. B18015). J.Y. was funded by Shanghai Pujiang Talent Program (grant no. 23PJD006). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis; decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. Further, we would like to thank the support from the ZHANGJIANG LAB, Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute, and the State Key Laboratory of Neurobiology and Frontiers Center for Brain Science of Ministry of Education, Fudan University.

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