Decreased salivary lactoferrin levels are specific to Alzheimer's disease
Marta González‐Sánchez, Fernando Benito Bartolomé, Desireé Antequera, Verónica Puertas‐Martín, Pilar González, Adolfo Gómez‐Grande, Sara Llamas‐Velasco, Alejandro Herrero-San Martín, David A. Pérez-Martínez, Alberto Villarejo‐Galende, Mercedes Atienza, Miriam Palomar-Bonet, José L. Cantero, George Perry, Gorka Orive, Borja Ibáñez, Héctor Bueno, Valentı́n Fuster, Eva Carro
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Evidences of infectious pathogens in Alzheimer's disease (AD) brains may suggest a deteriorated innate immune system in AD pathophysiology. We previously demonstrated reduced salivary lactoferrin (Lf) levels, one of the major antimicrobial proteins, in AD patients. METHODS: To assess the clinical utility of salivary Lf for AD diagnosis, we examine the relationship between salivary Lf and cerebral amyloid-β (Aβ) load using amyloid-Positron-Emission Tomography (PET) neuroimaging, in two different cross-sectional cohorts including patients with different neurodegenerative disorders. FINDINGS: ) versus healthy group, and 0•97 (0•924-1) versus the frontotemporal dementia (FTD) group. In the cohort 2, salivary Lf had also an excellent diagnostic performance in the health control group versus prodromal AD comparison: AUC 0•93 (0•876-0•989). Salivary Lf detected prodromal AD and AD dementia distinguishing them from FTD with over 87% sensitivity and 91% specificity. INTERPRETATION: Salivary Lf seems to have a very good diagnostic performance to detect AD. Our findings support the possible utility of salivary Lf as a new non-invasive and cost-effective AD biomarker. FUNDING: Instituto de Salud Carlos III (FIS15/00780, FIS18/00118), FEDER, Comunidad de Madrid (S2017/BMD-3700; NEUROMETAB-CM), and CIBERNED (PI2016/01) to E.C.; Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (SAF2017-85310-R) to J.L.C., and (PSI2017-85311-P) to M.A.; International Centre on ageing CENIE-POCTEP (0348_CIE_6_E) to M.A.; Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PIE16/00021, PI17/01799), to H.B.