medRxiv · Jun 9, 2025
Inflammation-related Cognitive Risk Score (ICRS) as tool for predicting cognitive decline in older adults
By Ma SL, Gao R, Lee ATC et al.
Abstract Objectives The prevalence of dementia increased exponentially with the aging population globally. Early detection of cognitive decline at prodromal stage allows room for intervention to prevent or delay the progress of dementia. This study aimed to identify a simple and accurate blood test to identify older adults who are at high risk of cognitive decline. Methods Inflammation-related marker panel was derived from gene expression data from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database and Inflammation-related Cognitive Risk Score (ICRS) was constructed to predict the risk of cognitive decline. 142 non-demented older adults from the community were recruited and followed-up for two years. RT-qPCR was performed for genes included in the marker panel using blood samples collected at baseline and ICRS was calculated for each older adults. Cognitive assessments were performed at baseline and 2-year follow-up and ICRS was used to identify older adults who were at high risk of cognitive decline. Results ICRS was significantly higher in older adults without cognitive decline when compared to those with cognitive decline (p=0.011). When the ICRS was further adjusted by vascular factors as ICRS-adj, the differentiation was significantly improved (p<0.001) with increased sensitivity and specificity. Conclusion Our result showed that ICRS-adj can predict cognitive decline with high sensitivity and specificity and this will be beneficial to identify older adults who are at high risk of dementia for early intervention.