Triggering Receptor Expressed on Myeloid Cells 2 (TREM2) is a microglial receptor, sensitive to Phospholipids and Sphingomyelins, associated with neurodegeneration. Hypomorphic variants in the
Systemic inflammation has been identified as a key factor in neurodegeneration but the value of circulating inflammatory proteins in dementia risk prediction and their causal role has not been elucida Show more
Systemic inflammation has been identified as a key factor in neurodegeneration but the value of circulating inflammatory proteins in dementia risk prediction and their causal role has not been elucidated. We leveraged proteomic data from 43,685 UK Biobank participants to investigate associations between 728 Olink inflammatory proteins and incident dementia using Cox proportional-hazards (Cox-PH) models. We used Cox-PH with LASSO regularisation to calculate a sparse signature of inflammatory proteins (ProSig) predicting incident dementia. Linear regressions assessed the association between ProSig and individual proteins with brain image-derived phenotypes and Brain Age in participants with available neuroimaging data (n = 4,106). Formal mediation analyses investigated whether inflammatory proteins mediated associations between genetic and modifiable risk factors and dementia outcomes. Mendelian randomisation (MR) tested the causal relationship between inflammatory proteins and dementia outcomes. 218 inflammatory proteins were individually associated with incident dementia in Cox-PH models (p By triangulating evidence, this study shows that inflammatory proteins improve dementia risk prediction and play heterogeneous roles in dementia pathophysiology. Show less