Blood metabolites predicting mild cognitive impairment in the study of Latinos‐investigation of neurocognitive aging (HCHS/SOL)

INTRODUCTION: Blood metabolomics‐based biomarkers may be useful to predict measures of neurocognitive aging. METHODS: We tested the association between 707 blood metabolites measured in 1451 participants from the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL), with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and global cognitive change assessed 7 years later. We further used Lasso penalized regression to construct a metabolomics risk score (MRS) that predicts MCI, potentially identifying a different set of metabolites than those discovered in individual‐metabolite analysis. RESULTS: We identified 20 metabolites predicting prevalent MCI and/or global cognitive change. Six of them were novel and 14 were previously reported as associated with neurocognitive aging outcomes. The MCI MRS comprised 61 metabolites and improved prediction accuracy from 84% (minimally adjusted model) to 89% in the entire dataset and from 75% to 87% among apolipoprotein E ε4 carriers. DISCUSSION: Blood metabolites may serve as biomarkers identifying individuals at risk for MCI among US Hispanics/Latinos.