A blood sugar molecule can predict Alzheimer’s. « Medicine in the Library

The researchers of the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society (NVS), Karolinska Institutet have now discovered that a type of blood sugar molecule is associated with the level of tau, a protein that plays a vital role in the development of severe dementia. The studiopublished in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, may pave the way for a simple screening procedure that can predict onset ten years in advance.

In the new study scientists have measured the levels of glycans with a simple blood test, and have ascertained that the levels of a particular component of these sugars, called N-acetylglucosamine bisected, are already altered in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. In this first block of analysis involving 233 participants in a Swedish National Study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen, patients with matching levels of glycans and tau protein were twice as likely to develop a Alzheimer’s-type dementia.
The samples were collected between 2001 and 2004 and the volunteers were monitored regularly for a follow-up of approximately 17 years.

«We further demonstrate that a simple statistical model that takes into account blood glycan and tau levels, the genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s APOE4, and the results of a memory test can be used to predict the risk of Alzheimer’s disease with 80% confidence, almost 10 years before symptoms such as memory loss appear» explains Prof. Sophia Schedin Weiss.

Clinical trials of Alzheimer’s drugs show that treatment should start early in the disease process, before too many neurons have died, to reverse the process before it’s too late.

Read the full text of the article:
A glycan epitope correlates with tau in serum and predicts progression to Alzheimer’s disease in combination with APOE4 allele status
Robin Ziyue Zhou, Davide Liborio Vetrano, Giulia Grande, Frida Duell, Linus Jönsson, Erika J Laukka, Claudia Fredolini, Bengt Winblad, Lars Tjernberg, Sophia Schedin-Weiss.
Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, online 12 April 2023.

Source: Karolinska Institutet