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Atrophy patterns in early clinical stages across distinct phenotypes of Alzheimer's disease.

ABSTRACT: Alzheimer's disease (AD) can present with distinct clinical variants. Identifying the earliest neurodegenerative changes associated with each variant has implications for early diagnosis, and for understanding the mechanisms that underlie regional vulnerability and disease progression in AD. We performed voxel-based morphometry to detect atrophy patterns in early clinical stages of four AD phenotypes: Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA, "visual variant," n=93), logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA, "language variant," n=74), and memory-predominant AD categorized as early age-of-onset (EOAD, <65 years, n=114) and late age-of-onset (LOAD, >65 years, n=114). Patients with each syndrome were stratified based on: (1) degree of functional impairment, as measured by the clinical dementia rating (CDR) scale, and (2) overall extent of brain atrophy, as measured by a neuroimaging approach that sums the number of brain voxels showing significantly lower gray matter volume than cognitively normal controls (n=80). Even at the earliest clinical stage (CDR=0.5 or bottom quartile of overall atrophy), patients with each syndrome showed both common and variant-specific atrophy. Common atrophy across variants was found in temporoparietal regions that comprise the posterior default mode network (DMN). Early syndrome-specific atrophy mirrored functional brain networks underlying functions that are uniquely affected in each variant: Language network in lvPPA, posterior cingulate cortex-hippocampal circuit in amnestic EOAD and LOAD, and visual networks in PCA. At more advanced stages, atrophy patterns largely converged across AD variants. These findings support a model in which neurodegeneration selectively targets both the DMN and syndrome-specific vulnerable networks at the earliest clinical stages of AD.

SUBMITTER: Ossenkoppele R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4692964 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Atrophy patterns in early clinical stages across distinct phenotypes of Alzheimer's disease.

Ossenkoppele Rik R Cohn-Sheehy Brendan I BI La Joie Renaud R Vogel Jacob W JW Möller Christiane C Lehmann Manja M van Berckel Bart N M BN Seeley William W WW Pijnenburg Yolande A YA Gorno-Tempini Maria L ML Kramer Joel H JH Barkhof Frederik F Rosen Howard J HJ van der Flier Wiesje M WM Jagust William J WJ Miller Bruce L BL Scheltens Philip P Rabinovici Gil D GD

Human brain mapping 20150811 11

Alzheimer's disease (AD) can present with distinct clinical variants. Identifying the earliest neurodegenerative changes associated with each variant has implications for early diagnosis, and for understanding the mechanisms that underlie regional vulnerability and disease progression in AD. We performed voxel-based morphometry to detect atrophy patterns in early clinical stages of four AD phenotypes: Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA, "visual variant," n=93), logopenic variant primary progressive ...[more]

PMID: 26260856

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Project description:The co-existence of multiple pathologies and proteins is a common feature in the brains of cognitively impaired elderly individuals. Transactive response DNA-binding protein (TDP-43) has been discovered to accumulate in limbic brain regions of a portion of late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, in addition to amyloid-? and ? protein. However, it is not yet known whether the TDP-43 species in the AD brain differ in their composition, when compared among different AD cases and to frontotemporal lobar degeneration cases with TDP-43 inclusions (FTLD-TDP). Furthermore, it is not known whether TDP-43 pathology in AD is related to symptoms of the frontotemporal dementia (FTD) spectrum. In this study, we investigated the molecular pattern of TDP-43 lesions with five different antibodies against different phosphorylated (pTDP-43) and non-phosphorylated TDP-43 epitopes. We analyzed a cohort of 97 autopsy cases, including brains from 20 non-demented individuals, 16 cognitively normal pathologically-defined preclinical AD (p-preAD), 51 neuropathologically-confirmed AD cases and 10 FTLD-TDP cases as positive controls. We observed distinct neuropathological patterns of TDP-43 among AD cases. In 11 neuropathologically-confirmed AD cases we found dystrophic neurites (DNs), neuronal cytoplasmic inclusions (NCIs) and/or neurofibrillary tangle (NFT)-like lesions not only positive for pTDP-43409/410, but also for pTDP-43 phosphorylated at serines 403/404 (pTDP-43403/404) and non-phosphorylated, full-length TDP-43, as seen with antibodies against C-terminal TDP-43 and N-terminal TDP-43. These cases were referred to as ADTDP?+?FL because full-length TDP-43 was presumably present in the aggregates. FTLD-TDP cases showed a similar molecular TDP-43 pattern. A second pattern, which was not seen in FTLD-TDP, was observed in most of p-preAD, as well as 30 neuropathologically-confirmed AD cases, which mainly exhibited NFTs and NCIs stained with antibodies against TDP-43 phosphorylated at serines 409/410 (pTDP-43409, pTDP-43409/410). Because only phosphorylated C-terminal species of TDP-43 could be detected in the lesions we designated these AD cases as ADTDP?+?CTF. Ten AD cases did not contain any TDP-43 pathology and were referred to as ADTDP-. The different TDP-43 patterns were associated with clinically typical AD symptoms in 80% of ADTDP?+?CTF cases, 63,6% of ADTDP?+?FL and 100% of the ADTDP- cases. On the other hand, clinical symptoms characteristic for FTD were observed in 36,4% of ADTDP?+?FL, in 16,6% of the ADTDP?+?CTF, and in none of the ADTDP- cases. Our findings provide evidence that TDP-43 aggregates occurring in AD cases vary in their composition, suggesting the distinction of different molecular patterns of TDP-43 pathology ranging from ADTDP- to ADTDP?+?CTF and ADTDP?+?FL with possible impact on their clinical picture, i.e. a higher chance for FTD-like symptoms in ADTDP?+?FL cases.

Project description:The clinical spectrum of Alzheimer's disease (AD) extends well beyond the classic amnestic-predominant syndrome. The previous studies have suggested differential neurofibrillary tangle (NFT) burden between amnestic and logopenic primary progressive aphasia presentations of AD. In this study, we explored the regional distribution of NFT pathology and its relationship to AD presentation across five different clinical syndromes. We assessed NFT density throughout six selected neocortical and hippocampal regions using thioflavin-S fluorescent microscopy in a well-characterized clinicopathological cohort of pure AD cases enriched for atypical clinical presentations. Subjects underwent apolipoprotein E genotyping and neuropsychological testing. Main cognitive domains (executive, visuospatial, language, and memory function) were assessed using an established composite z score. Our results showed that NFT regional burden aligns with the clinical presentation and region-specific cognitive scores. Cortical, but not hippocampal, NFT burden was higher among atypical clinical variants relative to the amnestic syndrome. In analyses of specific clinical variants, logopenic primary progressive aphasia showed higher NFT density in the superior temporal gyrus (p = 0.0091), and corticobasal syndrome showed higher NFT density in the primary motor cortex (p = 0.0205) relative to the amnestic syndrome. Higher NFT burden in the angular gyrus and CA1 sector of the hippocampus were independently associated with worsening visuospatial dysfunction. In addition, unbiased hierarchical clustering based on regional NFT densities identified three groups characterized by a low overall NFT burden, high overall burden, and cortical-predominant burden, respectively, which were found to differ in sex ratio, age, disease duration, and clinical presentation. In comparison, the typical, hippocampal sparing, and limbic-predominant subtypes derived from a previously proposed algorithm did not reproduce the same degree of clinical relevance in this sample. Overall, our results suggest domain-specific functional consequences of regional NFT accumulation. Mapping these consequences presents an opportunity to increase understanding of the neuropathological framework underlying atypical clinical manifestations.

Dataset Information

Atrophy patterns in early clinical stages across distinct phenotypes of Alzheimer's disease.

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Atrophy patterns in early clinical stages across distinct phenotypes of Alzheimer's disease.

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