Some blood proteins may predict the onset of dementia a decade in advance

Some blood plasma proteins can be used for predictup to ten years before diagnosis, risk of dementia for any reason, Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia.

A study published in the journal Nature Aging analyzes the data 52,645 adults without dementia from the UK Biobank, compared to previous studies that focused on fewer people or a small number of proteins.

Shanghai University Team (China) Plasma biomarkers associated with dementia prediction identified and explored its potential for predicting future risk of developing one of these diseases.

The study did average follow-up 14 yearsduring which 1,417 participants were diagnosed with dementia833 in the first 10 years, the magazine reported.

In addition, they analyzed 1463 plasma proteins and found that the so-called GFAP, NEFL, GDF15 and LTBP2 were consistently associated with incidence of dementia for any reason, Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia.

This served as the basis for the team’s development predictive model for the risk of developing dementia over 10 years and found that proteins such as GFAP, which were already known to be associated with these diseases, turned out to be high predictive value of the model.

GFAP levels begin to change approximately ten years before diagnosis.raising the possibility that this plasma protein may be a potential biomarker for early risk assessment.