Objective. Vascular dementia (VaD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease with cognitive decline caused by cerebrovascular factors. Despite the great progress made in the past decade, VaD still lacks effective treatments and peripheral blood biomarkers. In this study, we tested the level of peripheral blood neurofilament light chain (NfL) in VaD patients and explored its relationship with cognitive impairment. Method. A total of 176 study subjects including 80 normal controls (NC) and 96 VaD patients were included in our study. Upon admission, we collected clinical and biochemical characteristics of all research subjects. We also evaluate the Montreal cognitive assessment scale (MoCA) scores of all subjects. The serum NfL level was measured by the single-molecule array (Simoa) method. Results. The years of education in the NC group and VaD group were () years and () years, respectively. Compared with VaD patients, the NC group has a higher level of education (). Furthermore, the results of Simoa indicated that VaD subjects had higher serum NfL levels compared with the NC group [() pg/ml vs. () pg/ml, ]. In terms of other clinical and biochemical characteristics, there was no significant difference between VaD and NC. The Spearman correlation analysis indicated that educational years have a significant positive correlation with MoCA scores (, ), while age and serum NfL levels have a significantly negative correlation with MoCA scores (age: , ; NfL: , ). However, further multiple regression analysis showed that only serum NfL level might serve as an independent risk factor for cognitive decline in VaD (, ). Conclusion. The serum NfL levels in VaD subjects are significantly elevated, which may be used as a potential peripheral blood marker for predicting cognitive impairment in patients with VaD.

中文翻译：

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血管性痴呆症中与认知障碍相关的血清神经丝轻链水平升高

客观。血管性痴呆（VaD）是一种由脑血管因素引起的伴有认知能力下降的进行性神经退行性疾病。尽管在过去十年中取得了巨大进步，但 VaD 仍然缺乏有效的治疗方法和外周血生物标志物。在这项研究中，我们测试了 VaD 患者的外周血神经丝轻链 (NfL) 水平，并探讨了其与认知障碍的关系。方法。我们的研究共纳入 176 名研究对象，包括 80 名正常对照 (NC) 和 96 名 VaD 患者。入院时，我们收集了所有研究对象的临床和生化特征。我们还评估了所有科目的蒙特利尔认知评估量表 (MoCA) 分数。通过单分子阵列（Simoa）方法测量血清NfL水平。结果。NC组和VaD组受教育年限分别为（)年和 ()年，分别。与VaD患者相比，NC组受教育程度更高（）。此外，Simoa 的结果表明，与 NC 组相比，VaD 受试者的血清 NfL 水平更高 [() pg/ml 与 ()皮克/毫升，]。在其他临床和生化特征方面，VaD 和 NC 之间没有显着差异。Spearman 相关分析表明，受教育年限与 MoCA 得分呈显着正相关（, ），而年龄和血清 NfL 水平与 MoCA 评分呈显着负相关（年龄：, ; 美国橄榄球联盟：, ）。然而，进一步的多元回归分析表明，只有血清 NfL 水平可能作为 VaD 认知能力下降的独立危险因素。, ）。 结论。VaD受试者的血清NfL水平显着升高，可作为预测VaD患者认知障碍的潜在外周血标志物。