Back

Plasma proteomic evidence for increased Alzheimer's disease-related brain pathology after SARS-CoV-2 infection

Duff, E. P.; Zetterberg, H.; Heslegrave, A.; Dehghan, A.; Elliott, P.; Allen, N.; Runz, H.; Laban, R.; Veleva, E.; Whelan, C. D.; Sun, B. B.; Matthews, P. M.

2024-02-03 infectious diseases
10.1101/2024.02.02.24302132 medRxiv
Show abstract

Prior studies have suggested that systemic viral infections may increase risks of dementia. Whether this holds true for SARS-CoV-2 virus infections remains uncertain but is of great consequence for predicting future dementia rates. We examined this by comparing changes in plasma biomarkers in UK Biobank participants before and after serology confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections. We discovered biomarker changes associated with increased AD risk within this population. SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with reduced plasma A{beta}42:A{beta}40 concentration ratios, and in more vulnerable participants, lower plasma A{beta}42 and higher plasma pTau-181. These biomarker changes, which have been associated with brain beta-amyloid accumulation in prodromal AD, were associated here with increased brain imaging signatures of AD, poorer cognitive scores, and worse assessments of overall health. Changes were greater in participants who had been hospitalised with COVID-19 or had previously reported hypertension. Our data provide evidence for the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 can be associated with accelerating brain pathology related to prodromal AD.

Matching journals

The top 4 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.