Proteomic profiles of incident mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease among adults with Down syndrome

Abstract

Abstract Introduction We sought to determine if proteomic profiles could predict risk for incident mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) among adults with Down syndrome (DS). Methods In a cohort of 398 adults with DS, a total of n = 186 participants were determined to be non‐demented and without MCI or AD at baseline and throughout follow‐up; n = 103 had incident MCI and n = 81 had incident AD. Proteomics were conducted on banked plasma samples from a previously generated algorithm. Results The proteomic profile was highly accurate in predicting incident MCI (area under the curve [AUC] = 0.92) and incident AD (AUC = 0.88). For MCI risk, the support vector machine (SVM)‐based high/low cut‐point yielded an adjusted hazard ratio (HR) = 6.46 (P < .001). For AD risk, the SVM‐based high/low cut‐point score yielded an adjusted HR = 8.4 (P < .001). Discussion The current results provide support for our blood‐based proteomic profile for predicting risk for MCI and AD among adults with DS.

Keywords

• dementia
• Down syndrome
• mild cognitive impairment
• plasma
• proteomic