Proteomic profiles of incident mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease among adults with Down syndrome

INTRODUCTION: We sought to determine if proteomic profiles could predict risk for incident mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) among adults with Down syndrome (DS). METHODS: In a cohort of 398 adults with DS, a total of n = 186 participants were determined to be non‐demented and without MCI or AD at baseline and throughout follow‐up; n = 103 had incident MCI and n = 81 had incident AD. Proteomics were conducted on banked plasma samples from a previously generated algorithm. RESULTS: The proteomic profile was highly accurate in predicting incident MCI (area under the curve [AUC] = 0.92) and incident AD (AUC = 0.88). For MCI risk, the support vector machine (SVM)‐based high/low cut‐point yielded an adjusted hazard ratio (HR) = 6.46 (P < .001). For AD risk, the SVM‐based high/low cut‐point score yielded an adjusted HR = 8.4 (P < .001). DISCUSSION: The current results provide support for our blood‐based proteomic profile for predicting risk for MCI and AD among adults with DS.