On 1 December, researchers from Sweden published a paper on the impact of comorbidities on blood-based biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia. As comorbidities could have an influence on Alzheimer's disease (AD) plasma biomarkers. The scientists’ set up a study in order to investigate how medical conditions impact these as well as to understand if models that are adjusted for comorbidity could improve the diagnostic performance of them. As part of this, they analysed the most pertinent AD plasma biomarkers in 311 patients from the Karolinska University Hospital memory clinic. Their analysis revealed that there was an association between plasma biomarkers and comorbidities as well as metabolites (such as estimated glomerular filtration rate, homocysteine, but also high-density lipoprotein).
Although these associations were revealed, phosphorylated tau (p-tau)/amyloid beta (Aβ)42 and p-tau217 still showed excellent performances in the classification of AD pathology. Even more interesting was that the adjustment for measures of comorbidity allowed to significantly improve the diagnostic accuracy of Aβ42/40. These results led the team to the conclusion that plasma biomarkers performed robustly despite comorbidity associations, with p-tau217 revealed as the best discriminator, supporting their potential as diagnostic measures within clinical settings. The study was mainly funded through the Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking (JU) -projects PROMINENT under grant agreement No. 101112145 with support from BioArctic AD-RIDDLE, under grant agreement No. 101132933 as well as the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (USA).
