Abstract
Objective Vascular dementia (VaD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease with cognitive decline caused by cerebrovascular factors. Despite the great progress made in the past decade, VaD still lacks effective treatments and peripheral blood biomarkers. In this study, we tested the level of peripheral blood neurofilament light chain (NfL) in VaD patients and explored its relationship with cognitive impairment. Method A total of 176 study subjects including 80 normal controls (NC) and 96 VaD patients were included in our study. Upon admission, we collected clinical and biochemical characteristics of all research subjects. We also evaluate the Montreal cognitive assessment scale (MoCA) scores of all subjects. The serum NfL level was measured by the single-molecule array (Simoa) method. Results The years of education in the NC group and VaD group were (11.65 ± 3.04) years and (10.53 ± 3.87) years, respectively. Compared with VaD patients, the NC group has a higher level of education (p = 0.037). Furthermore, the results of Simoa indicated that VaD subjects had higher serum NfL levels compared with the NC group [(8.49 ± 2.37) pg/ml vs. (19.26 ± 4.71) pg/ml, p < 0.001]. In terms of other clinical and biochemical characteristics, there was no significant difference between VaD and NC. The Spearman correlation analysis indicated that educational years have a significant positive correlation with MoCA scores (r = 0.238, p = 0.041), while age and serum NfL levels have a significantly negative correlation with MoCA scores (age: r = −0.213, p = 0.040; NfL: r = −0.395, p = 0.027). However, further multiple regression analysis showed that only serum NfL level might serve as an independent risk factor for cognitive decline in VaD (β = 0.317, p = 0.021). Conclusion The serum NfL levels in VaD subjects are significantly elevated, which may be used as a potential peripheral blood marker for predicting cognitive impairment in patients with VaD.
Highlights
Vascular dementia (VaD) can be defined as a neurodegenerative disease related to vascular brain injury, which is mainly manifested as cognitive decline and memory loss [1, 2]
No significant differences were found in age, gender, smoking and alcohol habits, history of chronic disease (CHD, high blood pressure (HBP), HLP, and Diabetes Mellitus (DM)), systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), total cholesterol (TC), TG, highdensity lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), and FBG between VaD and normal controls (NC)
Johanna Gaiottino and his colleagues found that patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Guillain-Barré-syndrome (GBS) have higher levels of cerebrospinal fluid and serum neurofilament light chain (NfL), and this change in NfL level is not accompanied by evidence of structural damage of central nervous system (CNS) [21]
Summary
Vascular dementia (VaD) can be defined as a neurodegenerative disease related to vascular brain injury, which is mainly manifested as cognitive decline and memory loss [1, 2]. With the advent of a graying society, the number of people suffering from dementia has increased substantially. The number of people diagnosed with dementia will double every 20 years [3]. The number of dementia patients will reach 66 million in 2030 and 120 million in 2050 [4, 5]. VaD accounts for about 15%-20% of all dementias, and its incidence is second only to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) [6]. Unlike AD, there is no licensed treatment for vascular dementia. It is becoming imminent to find reliable molecular biomarkers to assess the potential risk of VaD
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
