Introduction: The aim of this study was to (1) replicate previous associations between six blood lipids
and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) (Proitsi et al 2015) and (2) identify novel associations between lipids, clinical
AD diagnosis, disease progression and brain atrophy (left/right hippocampus/entorhinal cortex).
Methods: We performed untargeted lipidomic analysis on 148 AD and 152 elderly control plasma
samples and used univariate and multivariate analysis methods.
Results: We replicated our previous lipids associations and reported novel associations between
lipids molecules and all phenotypes. A combination of 24 molecules classified AD patients with
.70% accuracy in a test and a validation data set, and we identified lipid signatures that predicted
disease progression (R2 5 0.10, test data set) and brain atrophy (R2 0.14, all test data sets except
left entorhinal cortex). We putatively identified a number of metabolic features including cholesteryl
esters/triglycerides and phosphatidylcholines.
Discussion: Blood lipids are promising AD biomarkers that may lead to new treatment strategies.