Proteins can predict who will develop dementia 10 years later, study says

Currently, brain scans can detect abnormal levels of a protein called amyloid beta many years before Alzheimer’s dementia develops, but the tests are expensive and often not covered by insurance.

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

Study author Jian-Feng Feng of Fudan University in Shanghai said such tests are critical in aging populations like China’s, and noted that he is in talks for the possible commercial development of a blood test based on your investigation. In the study, researchers from the University of Warwick and Fudan University studied 52,645 blood samples from the UK’s Biobank research repository, collected between 2006 and 2010 from people who had no signs of dementia at the time.

Of these, 1,417 people ended up developing Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia or dementia due to any cause. The researchers studied common protein signatures in these individuals and found 1,463 proteins associated with dementia and ranked them by how likely they were to predict dementia.

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 dementia from any cause. People with high levels of GFAP were 2.32 times more likely to develop dementia, confirming the findings of smaller studies that had pointed to the contribution of this protein.

The authors noted that their research has not been independently validated.

One protein that worked 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 be even better predictive of the development of dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease,” he said.

These tests are already being used to identify candidates for clinical trials testing treatments in patients with early-stage or even presymptomatic disease, such as Biogen’s Eisai and Leqembi. The drug recently gained regulatory approval in the United States, Japan and China.