Plasma contact factors as novel biomarkers for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease

BACKGROUND: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia and most of AD patients suffer from vascular abnormalities and neuroinflammation. There is an urgent need to develop novel blood biomarkers capable of diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) at very early stage. This study was performed to find out new accurate plasma diagnostic biomarkers for AD by investigating a direct relationship between plasma contact system and AD. METHODS: A total 101 of human CSF and plasma samples from normal and AD patients were analyzed. The contact factor activities in plasma were measured with the corresponding specific peptide substrates. RESULTS: The activities of contact factors (FXIIa, FXIa, plasma kallikrein) and FXa clearly increased and statistically correlated as AD progresses. We present here, for the first time, the FXIIa cut-off scores to as: > 26.3 U/ml for prodromal AD [area under the curve (AUC) = 0.783, p < 0.001] and > 27.2 U/ml for AD dementia (AUC = 0.906, p < 0.001). We also describe the cut-off scores from the ratios of CSF Aβ(1–42) versus the contact factors. Of these, the representative ratio cut-off scores of Aβ(1–42)/FXIIa were to be: < 33.8 for prodromal AD (AUC = 0.965, p < 0.001) and < 27.44 for AD dementia (AUC = 1.0, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The activation of plasma contact system is closely associated with clinical stage of AD, and FXIIa activity as well as the cut-off scores of CSF Aβ(1–42)/FXIIa can be used as novel accurate diagnostic AD biomarkers. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40364-020-00258-5.