BEIJING, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have identified a group of plasma proteomic profiles to predict the risk of dementia 15 years earlier before the disease is detected, according to a recent research article published in the journal Nature Aging.
The advent of proteomics offers an unprecedented opportunity to predict the onset of dementia. Researchers from the Fudan University in Shanghai studied 52,645 adults living without dementia for averagely more than 14 years.
By analyzing data from the 1,463 plasma proteins, the researchers found that the GFAP, NEFL, GDF15 and LTBP2 consistently associated with most incidents linked to all-cause dementia (ACD), Alzheimer's disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD), and ranked high in protein importance ordering.
Individuals with higher GFAP levels were 2.32 times more likely to develop dementia, according to the study. Notably, GFAP and LTBP2 were highly specific for dementia prediction, while GFAP and NEFL began to change 15 years before the dementia diagnosis.
The researchers described GFAP as an optimal biomarker for dementia prediction. Their previous prediction model can predict the risk of dementia 10 years in advance with an accuracy of 85 percent, according to Cheng Wei, the co-author of the study.
The prediction period was further advanced to 15 years before the onset of disease with the accuracy higher than 90 percent by the study, Cheng noted. ■
