Researchers identify blood biomarkers for early detection, monitoring of AMD
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Key takeaways:
- Researchers identified and validated a three-metabolite panel for the early detection of AMD.
- Blood biomarkers may help noninvasively diagnose early-stage AMD.
A biomarker panel of three serum metabolites associated with the onset, severity and progression of age-related macular degeneration may aid in earlier detection and monitoring of disease, according to researchers.
“The typically asymptomatic nature of early-stage AMD underscores the need for a screening test for the general population with good sensitivity and exceptional specificity,” Shengjie Li, of the Eye & ENT Hospital at Fudan University in Shanghai, and colleagues wrote in the Journal of Advanced Research. “Currently, there are no tests available for the widespread screening of AMD that satisfy these performance standards.”
In a multiphase, multicenter study, the researchers investigated the diagnostic and monitoring potential of blood metabolites in three cohorts: 140 individuals with AMD, 240 with other eye diseases and 167 healthy controls. Participants were recruited between January 2020 and December 2021 from the Eye Center at Fudan University and the Shanghai Xuhui Central Hospital.
The researchers collected fasting blood samples from each participant, which were analyzed via a mass-spectrometry-based, widely targeted metabolomic workflow.
Li and colleagues isolated metabolites that were detected in both the first and second discovery phases and developed a machine-learning algorithm to predict the probability of AMD. In the external validation phase, they confirmed the performance of a three-metabolite panel — hypoxanthine, 2-furoylglycine and 1-hexadecyl-2-azelaoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine — in monitoring the progression and severity of AMD.
Results showed the three-biomarker panel was highly accurate in distinguishing patients with AMD from the other two cohorts in the two discovery phases, with its effectiveness also “firmly established” in the external validation phase.
In addition, the biomarkers demonstrated significant concentration differences between patients with AMD and both healthy controls and those with other eye diseases.
“Our study demonstrates the potential of a three-biomarker panel for the early detection and monitoring of AMD; nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge its limitations,” Li and colleagues wrote. “Initially, our findings were replicated in an external cohort; however, all the participants were Chinese. This uniformity in genetic and environmental factors may restrict the generalizability of our results to various ethnic and racial groups.”
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