New international research: Two blood molecules may predict the development of Alzheimer's disease

MEDICINE NETWORK, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) -- Levels of two molecules in the blood may predict future cognitive decline and the development of Alzheimer's disease in patients with mild cognitive impairment, according to a new study of neurodegenerative diseases published in nature-aging, a professional academic journal of Springer Nature.
these two molecules are tau (P-tau181) and neural wire light chain (NfL) on suline-181 bits, respectively.
may help develop routine blood tests to track the progression of Alzheimer's disease in high-risk groups.
the paper, there are about 50 million people with Alzheimer's disease worldwide, accounting for 50-70% of all dementia cases.
Alzheimer's disease is characterized by proteins thought to cause neuron death to aggregate in the brain and eventually develop dementia.
new study found that these proteins are also present in the blood, and tests to detect their concentration in plasma can be used to diagnose the disease or to distinguish it from other common forms of dementia. Oskar Hansson, co-author of the
paper and colleagues at Lund University in Sweden, used data from 573 patients with mild cognitive impairment in two separate cohorts to build and validate individualized risk models to predict cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease development.
time, the accuracy of multiple models predicting cognitive decline and dementia progression over a four-year span was compared, based on various combinations of different biomarkers in the blood.
found that models based on P-tau181 and NfL, a form of tau protein, were the best predictive, while the latter reflected neuron death and injury.
authors conclude that their findings demonstrate the value of individually predicting progression of Alzheimer's disease through blood-based biomarkers.
, however, further large-level queue studies are needed.
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