They compared patients with or without encephalopathy, in-hospital death versus survival, discharge home versus other outcomes and all COVID-19 patients versus healthy controls (54), Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) (54) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) (53) patients. T-tau, p-tau181, GFAP, and NfL were significantly elevated in patients with encephalopathy and in those who died in-hospital, while t-tau, GFAP, and NfL were significantly lower in those discharged home. All neurodegenerative markers correlated with age, severity of COVID-19 illness (i.e. requiring mechanical ventilation, Sequential Organ Failure Assessment Score, lower oxygen saturations and mean arterial blood pressure), with T-tau, p-tau181 and NfL correlating more strongly with severity of illness. P-tau181, NfL and GFAP were also correlated with D-dimer levels. NfL and GFAP were higher in COVID patients than in controls, MCI or AD, and UCHL1 was higher in COVID-19 patients compared to controls and MCI patients.
Frontera JA, Boutajangout A, Masurkar AV, Betensky RA, Ge Y, Vedvyas A, Debure L, Moreira A, Lewis A, Huang J, Thawani S, Balcer L, Galetta S, Wisniewski T. Comparison of serum neurodegenerative biomarkers among hospitalized COVID-19 patients versus non-COVID subjects with normal cognition, mild cognitive impairment, or Alzheimer’s dementia. Alzheimers Dement. 2022 Jan 13.
doi: 10.1002/alz.12556.