Dataset Information

Tau PET in autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease: relationship with cognition, dementia and other biomarkers.

ABSTRACT: Tauopathy is a hallmark pathology of Alzheimer's disease with a strong relationship with cognitive impairment. As such, understanding tau may be a key to clinical interventions. In vivo tauopathy has been measured using cerebrospinal fluid assays, but these do not provide information about where pathology is in the brain. The introduction of PET ligands that bind to paired helical filaments provides the ability to measure the amount and distribution of tau pathology. The heritability of the age of dementia onset tied to the specific mutations found in autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease families provides an elegant model to study the spread of tau across the course of the disease as well as the cross-modal relationship between tau and other biomarkers. To better understand the pathobiology of Alzheimer's disease we measured levels of tau PET binding in individuals with dominantly inherited Alzheimer's disease using data from the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN). We examined cross-sectional measures of amyloid-?, tau, glucose metabolism, and grey matter degeneration in 15 cognitively normal mutation non-carriers, 20 asymptomatic carriers, and 15 symptomatic mutation carriers. Linear models examined the association of pathology with group, estimated years to symptom onset, as well as cross-modal relationships. For comparison, tau PET was acquired on 17 older adults with sporadic, late onset Alzheimer disease. Tau PET binding was starkly elevated in symptomatic DIAN individuals throughout the cortex. The brain areas demonstrating elevated tau PET binding overlapped with those seen in sporadic Alzheimer's disease, but with a greater cortical involvement and greater levels of binding despite similar cognitive impairment. Tau PET binding was elevated in the temporal lobe, but the most prominent loci of pathology were in the precuneus and lateral parietal regions. Symptomatic mutation carriers also demonstrated elevated tau PET binding in the basal ganglia, consistent with prior work with amyloid-?. The degree of tau tracer binding in symptomatic individuals was correlated to other biomarkers, particularly markers of neurodegeneration. In addition to the differences seen with tau, amyloid-? was increased in both asymptomatic and symptomatic groups relative to non-carriers. Glucose metabolism showed decline primarily in the symptomatic group. MRI indicated structural degeneration in both asymptomatic and symptomatic cohorts. We demonstrate that tau PET binding is elevated in symptomatic individuals with dominantly inherited Alzheimer's disease. Tau PET uptake was tied to the onset of cognitive dysfunction, and there was a higher amount, and different regional pattern of binding compared to late onset, non-familial Alzheimer's disease.

SUBMITTER: Gordon BA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6439328 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Tau PET in autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease: relationship with cognition, dementia and other biomarkers.

Gordon Brian A BA Blazey Tyler M TM Christensen Jon J Dincer Aylin A Flores Shaney S Keefe Sarah S Chen Charles C Su Yi Y McDade Eric M EM Wang Guoqiao G Li Yan Y Hassenstab Jason J Aschenbrenner Andrew A Hornbeck Russ R Jack Clifford R CR Ances Beau M BM Berman Sarah B SB Brosch Jared R JR Galasko Douglas D Gauthier Serge S Lah James J JJ Masellis Mario M van Dyck Christopher H CH Mintun Mark A MA Klein Gregory G Ristic Smiljana S Cairns Nigel J NJ Marcus Daniel S DS Xiong Chengjie C Holtzman David M DM Raichle Marcus E ME Morris John C JC Bateman Randall J RJ Benzinger Tammie L S TLS

Brain : a journal of neurology 20190401 4

Tauopathy is a hallmark pathology of Alzheimer's disease with a strong relationship with cognitive impairment. As such, understanding tau may be a key to clinical interventions. In vivo tauopathy has been measured using cerebrospinal fluid assays, but these do not provide information about where pathology is in the brain. The introduction of PET ligands that bind to paired helical filaments provides the ability to measure the amount and distribution of tau pathology. The heritability of the age ...[more]

PMID: 30753379

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Project description:Alzheimer's disease is a multifactorial dementia disorder characterized by early amyloid-?, tau deposition, glial activation and neurodegeneration, where the interrelationships between the different pathophysiological events are not yet well characterized. In this study, longitudinal multitracer positron emission tomography imaging of individuals with autosomal dominant or sporadic Alzheimer's disease was used to quantify the changes in regional distribution of brain astrocytosis (tracer (11)C-deuterium-L-deprenyl), fibrillar amyloid-? plaque deposition ((11)C-Pittsburgh compound B), and glucose metabolism ((18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose) from early presymptomatic stages over an extended period to clinical symptoms. The 52 baseline participants comprised autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease mutation carriers (n = 11; 49.6 ± 10.3 years old) and non-carriers (n = 16; 51.1 ± 14.2 years old; 10 male), and patients with sporadic mild cognitive impairment (n = 17; 61.9 ± 6.4 years old; nine male) and sporadic Alzheimer's disease (n = 8; 63.0 ± 6.5 years old; five male); for confidentiality reasons, the gender of mutation carriers is not revealed. The autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease participants belonged to families with known mutations in either presenilin 1 (PSEN1) or amyloid precursor protein (APPswe or APParc) genes. Sporadic mild cognitive impairment patients were further divided into (11)C-Pittsburgh compound B-positive (n = 13; 62.0 ± 6.4; seven male) and (11)C-Pittsburgh compound B-negative (n = 4; 61.8 ± 7.5 years old; two male) groups using a neocortical standardized uptake value ratio cut-off value of 1.41, which was calculated with respect to the cerebellar grey matter. All baseline participants underwent multitracer positron emission tomography scans, cerebrospinal fluid biomarker analysis and neuropsychological assessment. Twenty-six of the participants underwent clinical and imaging follow-up examinations after 2.8 ± 0.6 years. By using linear mixed-effects models, fibrillar amyloid-? plaque deposition was first observed in the striatum of presymptomatic autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease carriers from 17 years before expected symptom onset; at about the same time, astrocytosis was significantly elevated and then steadily declined. Diverging from the astrocytosis pattern, amyloid-? plaque deposition increased with disease progression. Glucose metabolism steadily declined from 10 years after initial amyloid-? plaque deposition. Patients with sporadic mild cognitive impairment who were (11)C-Pittsburgh compound B-positive at baseline showed increasing amyloid-? plaque deposition and decreasing glucose metabolism but, in contrast to autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease carriers, there was no significant longitudinal decline in astrocytosis over time. The prominent initially high and then declining astrocytosis in autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease carriers, contrasting with the increasing amyloid-? plaque load during disease progression, suggests astrocyte activation is implicated in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease pathology.

Project description:The recent development of tau-specific positron emission tomography (PET) tracers enables in vivo quantification of regional tau pathology, one of the key lesions in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Tau PET imaging may become a useful biomarker for clinical diagnosis and tracking of disease progression but there is no consensus yet on how tau PET signal is best quantified. The goal of the current study was to evaluate multiple whole-brain and region-specific approaches to detect clinically relevant tau PET signal. Two independent cohorts of cognitively normal adults and amyloid-positive (A?+) patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or AD-dementia underwent [18F]AV-1451 PET. Methods for tau tracer quantification included: (i) in vivo Braak staging, (ii) regional uptake in Braak composite regions, (iii) several whole-brain measures of tracer uptake, (iv) regional uptake in AD-vulnerable voxels, and (v) uptake in a priori defined regions. Receiver operating curves characterized accuracy in distinguishing A?- controls from AD/MCI patients and yielded tau positivity cutoffs. Clinical relevance of tau PET measures was assessed by regressions against cognition and MR imaging measures. Key tracer uptake patterns were identified by a factor analysis and voxel-wise contrasts. Braak staging, global and region-specific tau measures yielded similar diagnostic accuracies, which differed between cohorts. While all tau measures were related to amyloid and global cognition, memory and hippocampal/entorhinal volume/thickness were associated with regional tracer retention in the medial temporal lobe. Key regions of tau accumulation included medial temporal and inferior/middle temporal regions, retrosplenial cortex, and banks of the superior temporal sulcus. Our data indicate that whole-brain tau PET measures might be adequate biomarkers to detect AD-related tau pathology. However, regional measures covering AD-vulnerable regions may increase sensitivity to early tau PET signal, atrophy and memory decline.

Project description:African Americans have been reported to have a higher prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) than Caucasians, but etiology-specific AD biomarkers have not been systematically analyzed in older African Americans. Coexisting cerebrovascular disease may also contribute to this increased prevalence. We hypothesized that cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers of amyloid, neurodegeneration, and endothelial dysfunction would differ between older African Americans and Caucasians with normal cognition and cognitive impairment associated with AD.We prospectively recruited 135 older Americans to undergo detailed clinical, neuropsychological, genetic, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and CSF analysis from 2013 to 2015 at Emory University (Atlanta, GA, USA). We compared levels of CSF markers for ?-amyloid (A?42, A?40), total and phosphorylated tau (t-tau and p-tau181, respectively), endothelial dysfunction (soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule 1, soluble intercellular adhesion molecule 1), ?-synuclein, and neurodegeneration (neurofilament light chain [NfL]), as well as MRI markers, for hippocampal atrophy and cerebrovascular disease (white matter hyperintensity [WMH] volume).Sixty-five older African Americans (average age, 69.1 years) and 70 older Caucasians (average age, 70.8 years) were included. After adjusting for demographic variables, AD risk alleles, and cognitive function, older African Americans had lower CSF levels of p-tau181 (difference of 7.4 pg/ml; 95% CI, 3.7-11.2 pg/ml; p?<?0.001), t-tau (difference of 23.6 pg/ml; 95% CI, 9.5-37.7; p?=?0.001), and A?40 (difference of 1.35 ng/ml; 95% CI, 0.29-2.42 ng/ml; p?=?0.013) despite similar levels of A?42, NfL, WMH volume, and hippocampal volume. Cognitively impaired African Americans also had lower CSF t-tau/A?42 (difference of 0.255 per 1-SD change in composite cognition; 95% CI, 0.100-0.409; p?=?0.001) and p-tau181/A?42 (difference of 0.076 per 1-SD change in composite cognition; 95% CI, 0.031-0.122; p?=?0.001). These could not be explained by measured biomarkers of non-AD processes, but African Americans may be more susceptible than Caucasians to the cognitive effects of WMH.Despite comparable levels of CSF A?42 and A?42/A?40, cognitive impairment in African Americans is associated with smaller changes in CSF tau markers but greater impact from similar WMH burden than Caucasians. Race-associated differences in CSF tau markers and ratios may lead to underdiagnosis of AD in African Americans.ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT02089555 . Retrospectively registered on 14 March 2014.

Dataset Information

Tau PET in autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease: relationship with cognition, dementia and other biomarkers.

Publications

Tau PET in autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease: relationship with cognition, dementia and other biomarkers.

Similar Datasets

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