Overview
- In a paper published April 3 in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, NYU Langone and VA researchers report that a higher neutrophil‑to‑lymphocyte ratio from a routine complete blood count was tied to greater odds of later dementia diagnoses before symptoms begin.
- The analysis covered nearly 285,000 NYU hospital patients and about 85,000 Veterans Health Administration patients, with elevated risk estimates of HR 1.07 at NYU and HR 1.21 in the VA cohort.
- Investigators used each patient’s earliest eligible NLR at age 55 or older, then tracked new Alzheimer’s and related dementia diagnoses at least six months after the blood draw using ICD codes, and they found a dose‑response pattern that rose with higher NLR values.
- Risk increases were larger in Hispanic patients and in women across both systems, though the study does not determine whether biology or differences in care access explain the gap.
- NLR alone is not a diagnostic test, yet the team says it could be one element in broader risk models as follow‑up work measures neutrophil activity alongside brain imaging to probe whether inflammation and vascular damage drive disease.