Blood protein links to dementia vary with liver scarring score
In 48,754 dementia-free UK Biobank participants, nine blood proteins had links to later dementia that differed with a liver scarring index.
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
A prospective observational study measured 2,923 blood proteins in 48,754 UK Biobank participants who were free of dementia. Researchers tested whether protein links to later dementia differed with the fibrosis-4 index, a score used to assess liver scarring.
Nine proteins showed links to dementia that differed with the index. Analyses of their functions pointed mainly to inflammation, immune processes, transport within cells and the organization of material surrounding cells. Among participants with high index scores, adding two candidate proteins to a clinical prediction model increased its internally validated C-index, a measure of how well it ranked dementia risk, from 0.732 to 0.764. The authors suggested that these proteins may help classify people with high scores by their future dementia risk.
Why it matters
The authors’ proposed liver–brain connection points to inflammatory and immune processes as avenues to investigate in dementia, an age-related disease.
Caveats
The observational design cannot establish cause and effect. The abstract reports internal validation of the prediction model, but no testing in an independent population.
The paper
Southern Medical University
Journal of Alzheimer's Disease Reports, Oct 30, 2026, Open access, CC BY-NC
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