Pilot Project – Dr. Shehroo Pudumjee

Inflammatory cytokines have been associated with cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and have established sex differences, making them a target of interest in intervention. Similar to work in AD, there are sex differences in brain tumor incidence, survival rates, as well as inflammatory markers. This study investigated the role of plasma neurofilament light (NfL) and inflammatory cytokines in predicting conversion to more severe disease states in AD and brain tumors. This comparison is especially salient because some inflammatory cytokines as well as NfL have been well studied, and found to impact disease severity separately in AD and gliomas, but a direct comparison, focusing on transition in disease stages/tumor grades across these patient populations has not been conducted.