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Forgetting the name of a loved one may be one of the first signs people notice of dementia, but it's rarely the first warning sign your brain gives. Changes in the brain that lead to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia start showing up decades before symptoms arrive, and the chemicals at work inside the body can often tip us off to these changes well ahead of time.

edited by Lisa Lock , reviewed by Robert Egan

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A recent study found that a blood protein called GDF15, which is released when cells are under stress, could serve as one of the earliest warning signs of dementia. After tracking more than half a million people for 15–25 years, researchers discovered that those with higher GDF15 levels before age 55 were significantly more likely to develop dementia later in life. Finding that protein in the blood was a much stronger predictor of vascular dementia than Alzheimer's disease and related dementia.

This opens the possibility that a simple blood test in midlife, one that checks for GDF15, could help doctors flag who is at higher risk of dementia decades down the line. The findings are published in Science Advances .

Protein biomarkers have gained significant attention in recent years as potential tools for diagnosing Alzheimer's and other dementia disorders. A major study examined the proteome, the full set of proteins in the blood, and found that disruptions in proteins associated with metabolism, synaptic communication and the immune system were measurable as early as 20 years before diagnosis.