The clinical use of blood-test factors for Alzheimer’s disease: improving the prediction of cerebral amyloid deposition by the QPLEXTM Alz plus assay kit

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia, and many studies have focused on finding effective blood biomarkers for the accurate diagnosis of this disease. Predicting cerebral amyloid deposition is considered the key for AD diagnosis because a cerebral amyloid deposition is the hallmark of AD pathogenesis. Previously, blood biomarkers were discovered to predict cerebral amyloid deposition, and further efforts have been made to increase their sensitivity and specificity. In this study, we analyzed blood-test factors (BTFs) that can be commonly measured in medical health check-ups from 149 participants with cognitively normal, 87 patients with mild cognitive impairment, and 64 patients with clinically diagnosed AD dementia with brain amyloid imaging data available. We demonstrated that four factors among regular health check-up blood tests, cortisol, triglyceride/high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio, alanine aminotransferase, and free triiodothyronine, showed either a significant difference by or correlation with cerebral amyloid deposition. Furthermore, we made a prediction model for Pittsburgh compound B-positron emission tomography positivity, using BTFs and the previously discovered blood biomarkers, the QPLEX TM Alz plus assay kit biomarker panel, and the area under the curve was significantly increased up to 0.845% with 69.4% sensitivity and 90.6% specificity. These results show that BTFs could be used as co-biomarkers and that a highly advanced prediction model for amyloid plaque deposition could be achieved by the combinational use of diverse biomarkers.