Cerebrospinal fluid levels of neurogranin and YKL-40 in mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease or vascular dementia

Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2026

Background: Markers of synaptic degeneration and neuroinflammation have been investigated in memory clinic cohorts, but less is known about their role in community-dwelling subjects.
Objective: To investigate baseline cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of neurogranin and YKL-40 in community-dwelling subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) who had not yet sought help for their cognitive decline.
Methods: We recruited and characterized 107 subjects, who at the clinical baseline examination were found to have MCI. Based on the clinical progression at a 3-year follow-up, the individuals were classified as MCI-Alzheimer's disease (MCI-AD, n = 40), MCI-vascular dementia (MCI-VaD, n = 25), and stable MCI (sMCI, n = 42).
Results: Baseline CSF neurogranin level was elevated in the MCI-AD group compared with the MCI-VaD and sMCI groups (p = 0.02 and p < 0.001, respectively), and baseline CSF YKL-40 level was higher in the MCI-AD group than in the sMCI group (p = 0.01). Neurogranin, and to a lesser extent YKL-40, correlated positively with CSF levels of total tau and phosphorylated tau(181) in all study groups. However, in receiver operator characteristics analyses, neurogranin and YKL-40 used alone or in combination had a moderate diagnostic accuracy that was lower than that of the core AD biomarkers (amyloid-beta(42), total tau, and phosphorylated tau(181)).
Conclusions: This study shows that neurogranin and YKL-40 in CSF are elevated in MCI-AD compared with sMCI, and neurogranin was also higher in MCI-AD than in MCI-VaD. Neurogranin and YKL-40 had a moderate diagnostic accuracy, but they could still be of value to characterize the clinical consequences of postsynaptic dysfunction and neuroinflammation.