Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a progressive neurodegenerative disease, is the most common cause of dementia worldwide. Accumulating data support the contributions of the peripheral immune system in AD pathogenesis. However, there is a lack of comprehensive understanding about the molecular characteristics of peripheral immune cells in AD. In a study published on 29 August 2022 in BMC Medicine, Prof. Xing-Ming Zhao at ISTBI and his research team found the cellular transcriptional alterations of peripheral blood in Alzheimer’s disease.

To explore the alterations of cellular composition and the alterations of intrinsic expression of individual cell types in peripheral blood, the researchers performed cellular deconvolution in a large-scale bulk blood expression cohort and identified cell-intrinsic differentially expressed genes in individual cell types with adjusting for cellular proportion. The researchers detected a significant increase and decrease in the proportion of neutrophils and B lymphocytes in AD blood, respectively, which had a robust replicability across other three AD cohorts, as well as using alternative algorithms.

The differentially expressed genes in AD neutrophils were enriched for some AD-associated pathways, such as ATP metabolic process and mitochondrion organization. The researchers also found a significant enrichment of protein-protein interaction network modules of leukocyte cell-cell activation, mitochondrion organization, and cytokine-mediated signaling pathway in neutrophils for AD risk genes including CD33 and IL1B. Both changes in cellular composition and expression levels of specific genes were significantly associated with the clinical and pathological alterations. A similar pattern of perturbations on the cellular proportion and gene expression levels of neutrophils could be also observed in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Moreover, an elevation of neutrophil abundance in the AD brains was noticed. The study revealed the landscape of molecular perturbations at the cellular level for AD. These alterations highlight the putative roles of neutrophils in AD pathobiology.

Full Article:

Song, L., Yang, Y.T., Guo, Q. et al. Cellular transcriptional alterations of peripheral blood in Alzheimer’s disease. BMC Med 20, 266 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-022-02472-4