Plasma Lipocalin 2 in Alzheimer’s disease: potential utility in the differential diagnosis and relationship with other biomarkers

Background Lipocalin-2 is a glycoprotein that is involved in various physiological and pathophysiological processes. In the brain, it is expressed in response to vascular and other brain injury, as well as in Alzheimer's disease in reactive microglia and astrocytes. Plasma Lipocalin-2 has been proposed as a biomarker for Alzheimer's disease but available data is scarce and inconsistent. Thus, we evaluated plasma Lipocalin-2 in the context of Alzheimer's disease, differential diagnoses, other biomarkers, and clinical data. Methods For this two-center case-control study, we analyzed Lipocalin-2 concentrations in plasma samples from a cohort of n = 407 individuals. The diagnostic groups comprised Alzheimer's disease (n = 74), vascular dementia (n = 28), other important differential diagnoses (n = 221), and healthy controls (n = 84). Main results were validated in an independent cohort with patients with Alzheimer's disease (n = 19), mild cognitive impairment (n = 27), and healthy individuals (n = 28). Results Plasma Lipocalin-2 was significantly lower in Alzheimer's disease compared to healthy controls (p < 0.001) and all other groups (p < 0.01) except for mixed dementia (vascular and Alzheimer's pathologic changes). Areas under the curve from receiver operation characteristics for the discrimination of Alzheimer's disease and healthy controls were 0.783 (95%CI: 0.712-0.855) in the study cohort and 0.766 (95%CI: 0.627-0.905) in the validation cohort. The area under the curve for Alzheimer's disease versus vascular dementia was 0.778 (95%CI: 0.667-0.890) in the study cohort. In Alzheimer's disease patients, plasma Lipocalin2 did not show significant correlation with cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers of neurodegeneration and AD-related pathology (total-tau, phosphorylated tau protein, and beta-amyloid 1-42), cognitive status (Mini Mental Status Examination scores), APOE genotype, or presence of white matter hyperintensities. Interestingly, Lipocalin 2 was lower in patients with rapid disease course compared to patients with non-rapidly progressive Alzheimer's disease (p = 0.013). Conclusions Plasma Lipocalin-2 has potential as a diagnostic biomarker for Alzheimer's disease and seems to be independent from currently employed biomarkers

The surgical safety checklist and patient outcomes after surgery: a prospective observational cohort study, systematic review and meta-analysis

© 2017 British Journal of Anaesthesia Background: The surgical safety checklist is widely used to improve the quality of perioperative care. However, clinicians continue to debate the clinical effectiveness of this tool. Methods: Prospective analysis of data from the International Surgical Outcomes Study (ISOS), an international observational study of elective in-patient surgery, accompanied by a systematic review and meta-analysis of published literature. The exposure was surgical safety checklist use. The primary outcome was in-hospital mortality and the secondary outcome was postoperative complications. In the ISOS cohort, a multivariable multi-level generalized linear model was used to test associations. To further contextualise these findings, we included the results from the ISOS cohort in a meta-analysis. Results are reported as odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals. Results: We included 44 814 patients from 497 hospitals in 27 countries in the ISOS analysis. There were 40 245 (89.8%) patients exposed to the checklist, whilst 7508 (16.8%) sustained ≥1 postoperative complications and 207 (0.5%) died before hospital discharge. Checklist exposure was associated with reduced mortality [odds ratio (OR) 0.49 (0.32–0.77); P\u3c0.01], but no difference in complication rates [OR 1.02 (0.88–1.19); P=0.75]. In a systematic review, we screened 3732 records and identified 11 eligible studies of 453 292 patients including the ISOS cohort. Checklist exposure was associated with both reduced postoperative mortality [OR 0.75 (0.62–0.92); P\u3c0.01; I2=87%] and reduced complication rates [OR 0.73 (0.61–0.88); P\u3c0.01; I2=89%). Conclusions: Patients exposed to a surgical safety checklist experience better postoperative outcomes, but this could simply reflect wider quality of care in hospitals where checklist use is routine