Proteins can predict dementia 10 years earlier, study says – 02/14/2024 – Equilíbrio

A study of frozen blood samples has revealed a series of proteins that can predict various forms of dementia more than 10 years before the disease is diagnosed, researchers from the United Kingdom and China reported Monday.

The work, published in the journal Nature Aging, is part of ongoing research by several teams to identify patients at risk of dementia using a simple blood test, a breakthrough that many scientists believe will speed the development of new treatments.

Currently, brain imaging tests can detect abnormal levels of a protein called beta-amyloid many years before the development of Alzheimer’s disease, but the tests are expensive and may not be covered by health insurance.

“Based on this study, it seems likely that blood tests will be developed to predict the risk of developing dementia over the next 10 years, although individuals at higher risk often have difficulty knowing how to respond,” says Suzanne Schindler, an Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of Washington in St. Louis, who was not involved in the research.

Study author Jian-Feng Feng of Fudan University in Shanghai says such tests are essential in aging populations like China’s, and says he is in talks for the potential commercial development of a blood test with based on your research.

In the study, researchers from the University of Warwick and Fudan University evaluated 52,645 blood samples from the UK Biobank research repository collected between 2006 and 2010 from people who did not show signs of dementia at the time.

Of those, 1,417 people eventually developed Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia or the disease of any cause. The researchers studied common protein signatures in these individuals and found 1,463 proteins associated with dementia and ranked them according to their likelihood of predicting the condition.

They found that people whose blood contained higher levels of the proteins GFAP, NEFL, GDF15 and LTBP2 were consistently more likely to have developed Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia or other dementias. People with high levels of GFAP were 2.32 times more likely to develop dementia, confirming findings from smaller studies that pointed to the contribution of this protein.

The authors noted that their research has not been independently validated. A protein that has done well in predicting dementia, neurofilament light, is already used in the clinic to diagnose and monitor some conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, Schindler said in an email.

“This study did not include clinically available blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease, which would likely even better predict the development of dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease,” she said.

Such tests are already being used to identify candidates for clinical trials that test treatments in patients with early-stage or even pre-symptomatic disease, such as Eisai 4523.T’s Leqembi and Biogen’s BIIB.O. The drug recently gained regulatory approval in the United States, Japan and China.