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Observational Study
. 2025 Mar;132(3):455-468.
doi: 10.1007/s00702-024-02859-y. Epub 2024 Nov 13.

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy and vagus somatosensory evoked potentials add to the power of established parameters such as poor cognitive performance, dsyosmia and APOe genotype to predict cognitive decline over 8 years in the elderly

Martin J Herrmann  1 , Alexandra Wuttke  2 , Linda Breuninger  2 , Judith Eff  2 , Sophia Ettlinger  2 , Matthias Fischer  2   3 , Andrea Götzelmann  2 , Annika Gram  2 , Laura D Pomper  2   4 , Evelyn Schneider  2 , Lisa Schwitalla  2 , Niklas Siminski  2 , Fabian Spielmann  2 , Erik Weinmann  2 , Viona Weyel  2 , Julia B M Zeller  2 , Martin Lauer  2 , Jürgen Deckert  2 , Thomas Polak  2
Affiliations
Observational Study

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy and vagus somatosensory evoked potentials add to the power of established parameters such as poor cognitive performance, dsyosmia and APOe genotype to predict cognitive decline over 8 years in the elderly

Martin J Herrmann et al. J Neural Transm (Vienna). 2025 Mar.

Abstract

Alzheimer's dementia is the main cause of cognitive impairment in people over the age of 65, with Alzheimer's disease starting presumably 10-15 years before the onset of clinical symptoms. It is therefore important to recognize dementia at an early stage and identify possible predictors. The existing methods, like different parameters of ß-Amyloid and Tau quantification in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) or the living brain by measure of PET, are invasive and expensive. Therefore, the present study investigates the predictive value of a battery of clinical, neuropsychological, and blood parameters as well as two neurophysiological methods (functional near-infrared spectroscopy [fNIRS] and vagus somatosensory evoked potentials [VSEP]) which are easy to perform, less invasive and cost-efficient, for developing cognitive impairments in the elderly.In this longitudinal, prospective study, we enrolled 604 healthy participants between 70 and 77 years of age. The participants were invited back after a mean time interval of 3 years and 11 months, and after 7 years and 8 months, and their cognitive impairments were determined.Here we show that the development of cognitive impairments after approximately 8 years can be predicted not only by previously known risk factors such as ApoE4 risk alleles, dysosmia, or poor cognitive performance at baseline but that latency prolongation in the VSEP and altered functional activation patterns measured by NIRS at baseline also provide additional predictive value.We therefore suggest that both neurophysiological parameters, VSEP and NIRS, should be included in future studies, investigating the prediction of dementia. Dementia ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02224326.

Keywords: NIRS; Prediction of cognitive impairments; VSEP.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. The Vogel Stiftung Dr. Eckernkamp funded this study. The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article. All participants gave written informed consent. The study was approved by the medical ethics committee at the University of Würzburg (vote no. 23/11) and is in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Chart flow of analyzed sample
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
[O2Hb] of the letter version of the VFT during V1
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
ROC-curves showing the predictive performance for cognitive decline from V1 to V3 (LOCF)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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