A new study sheds light on the action of a blood plasma linked to inflammation, which could be the subject of an early and inexpensive diagnosis to detect certain forms of dementia.
Dementia refers to cognitive decline, the most common form of which is Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists authors of a rresearch published in Neurology studied the action of an inflammatory marker in the blood called sCD14, which may be linked to brain atrophy, cognitive decline and dementia.
“Brain lesions that predispose to dementia, whether due to vascular brain injury, Alzheimer’s proteinopathy or head trauma, are accompanied by a neuroinflammatory response,” says Dr Matthew Pase, researcher at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health (Melbourne, Australia), who led the study.
The searches focused on two studies involving a total of more than 4,700 participants, with an average age of 69 and 72 years. Plasma sCD14 was measured in participants’ blood at the time of study entry.
Link between high levels of sCD14 and cognitive decline
In the first group (from the Framingham longitudinal study), an examination Brain MRI and cognitive tests were performed within a year of blood sampling for sCD14. A second series of tests was carried out seven years later. Dementia surveillance was carried out over an average period of nine years.
In the second study, which focused on the cardiovascular health, the first brain MRI was performed three to four years after enrollment, and then a second time five years later. The results show that high levels of sCD14 were associated with brain damage and aging, as well as cognitive decline.
“It would be interesting to examine to what extent sCD14 in the blood reflects inflammation in the brain as well as to determine which combinations of biomarkers best predict the risk of future dementia (…) Developing cost-effective blood biomarkers for dementia could improve clinical research and practice by enabling widespread screening at low cost and helping to identify at-risk participants for dementia prevention trials,” concludes Matthew Pase.
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