A recent study found an association between diabetes and higher serum neurofilament light chains (sNfL), a biomarker of nerve axonal damage in multiple neurological diseases, in the US population.
The researchers measured sNfL levels in 2,070 people aged 20 to 75 years from the general US population (275 with diabetes and 1,795 without diabetes) who participated in the 2013-2014 cycle of the National Health and Nutrition Examinations. They used multivariable linear regression models to investigate the relationship between diabetes and her sNfL levels after adjusting for age, sex, race, alcohol use, and renal function.
A subset of participants aged 60–75 years were assessed for cognitive function using the Consortium for Establishing the Alzheimer’s Disease Registry – a word learning test, an animal fluency test, and a digit symbol substitution test.
The weighted prevalence of diabetes was 10.4% (95% confidence interval, 0.9–11.9). In each age group, diabetic patients showed higher sNfL levels than non-diabetic patients. Although there was a progressive increase in homeostatic models of insulin resistance across quartiles of age, proportion of males, prevalence of diabetes, and sNfL levels, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) was reversed. showed a trend of
In multivariable models, sNfL levels were significantly correlated with age, gender, diabetes, eGFR, and alcohol use. Furthermore, higher sNfL levels were significantly correlated with poorer performance on all cognitive tests used.
“Further large-scale, prospective studies are needed to replicate our results and assess the ability of sNfL to predict the incidence of neuropathy and dementia in this patient population,” said the researchers. increase.
