Neutrophil Blood Marker Flags Dementia Risk in 400K Study
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- NYU Langone Health researchers analyzed data from about 285,000 NYU patients and roughly 85,000 Veterans Health Administration patients, finding that higher neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratios (NLR) were consistently associated with greater likelihood of developing Alzheimer's or other dementias, both near- and long-term.
- The study, published April 3, 2026 in Alzheimer's & Dementia, is the first large-scale investigation linking neutrophil metrics to future dementia risk in humans, with elevated NLR readings preceding any cognitive decline in the tracked patients.
- First author Tianshe He, PhD, a data scientist in NYU's Department of Psychiatry, said the neutrophil elevation occurs before any evidence of cognitive decline, making a compelling case for studying whether neutrophils actively contribute to disease progression.
- Co-senior author Jaime Ramos-Cejudo, PhD noted that NLR alone is unlikely to serve as a definitive predictor, but combined with other risk factors could flag patients for closer monitoring, additional testing, or early intervention before symptoms emerge.
- Subgroup differences in the data showed Hispanic patients had a stronger association between elevated NLR and dementia risk, while women in both healthcare systems also showed heightened risk linked to elevated NLR.
- The research team cautioned that a direct cause-and-effect link remains unconfirmed, noting neutrophils' short lifespan makes them harder to study than cells that can be stored, but their VIDA lab is pairing neutrophil measures with PET and diffusion MRI brain imaging to test causality.
Why it matters: The NLR value is already calculated from a routine complete blood count ordered millions of times daily in clinical practice, meaning a dementia risk signal could in principle be extracted from existing lab work at no added cost. If validated, it could become a low-cost triage layer that flags the roughly 50% of patients with above-median NLR readings for earlier cognitive follow-up, years before symptoms appear.
