Recently, Jintai Yu, professor at Fudan University-affiliated Huashan Hospital and a researcher at the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute (TCCI), published a study titled “Serum clinical laboratory tests and risk of incident dementia: a prospective cohort study of 407190 individuals” in Translational Psychiatry. The study was designed to investigate the association of common serum laboratory tests with the risk of incident dementia.
Among 407,190 participants from the UK Biobank (median follow-up of 9.19 years), we investigated the linear and nonlinear effects of 30 laboratory measures on the risk of all-cause dementia using Cox models and restricted cubic spline models. The 30 serum signatures detected were divided into several categories to reflect potential relationships with specific types of systemic dysfunction.
In conclusion, markers of vitamin D deficiency, GH-IGF-1 axis disorders, bioactive sex hormone deficiency, reduced liver function, renal abnormalities, oxidation, insulin resistance, immune dysbiosis, and lipids dysregulation were associated with incident dementia. Our results support a contributory role of systemic disorders and diverse biological processes to onset of dementia. Importantly, our study is valuable for the prediction of dementia, especially in the large-scale screening or primary care setting. Therefore, we suggest that when these blood biomarkers are at deviations from normal concentrations, more attention should be focused on cognition.