Department of Neurology, Liaocheng People's Hospital, Liaocheng, Shandong, China 252000.
Dis Markers. 2020 Nov 1;2020:6612871. doi: 10.1155/2020/6612871. eCollection 2020.
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.
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.
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 ( = 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, < 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 ( = 0.238, = 0.041), while age and serum NfL levels have a significantly negative correlation with MoCA scores (age: = -0.213, = 0.040; NfL: = -0.395, = 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 ( = 0.317, = 0.021).
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.
血管性痴呆（VaD）是一种由脑血管因素引起的进行性神经退行性疾病，伴有认知能力下降。尽管在过去十年中取得了巨大进展，但 VaD 仍然缺乏有效的治疗方法和外周血生物标志物。在这项研究中，我们检测了 VaD 患者外周血神经丝轻链（NfL）水平，并探讨了其与认知障碍的关系。
共纳入 176 名研究对象，包括 80 名正常对照（NC）和 96 名 VaD 患者。入院时，我们收集了所有研究对象的临床和生化特征。我们还评估了所有受试者的蒙特利尔认知评估量表（MoCA）评分。血清 NfL 水平采用单分子阵列（Simoa）法测定。
NC 组和 VaD 组的受教育年限分别为（11.65±3.04）年和（10.53±3.87）年。与 VaD 患者相比，NC 组受教育程度更高（ = 0.037）。此外，Simoa 的结果表明 VaD 患者的血清 NfL 水平高于 NC 组[（8.49±2.37）pg/ml 比（19.26±4.71）pg/ml， < 0.001]。在其他临床和生化特征方面，VaD 组与 NC 组之间无显著性差异。Spearman 相关分析表明，受教育年限与 MoCA 评分呈显著正相关（ = 0.238， = 0.041），而年龄和血清 NfL 水平与 MoCA 评分呈显著负相关（年龄： = -0.213， = 0.040；NfL： = -0.395， = 0.027）。然而，进一步的多元回归分析表明，只有血清 NfL 水平可能是 VaD 患者认知功能下降的独立危险因素（ = 0.317， = 0.021）。
VaD 患者血清 NfL 水平显著升高，可作为预测 VaD 患者认知障碍的潜在外周血标志物。
