The ability to identify and quantify brain β-amyloid could increase the accuracy of a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer disease.
To determine if florbetapir F 18 positron emission tomographic (PET) ...imaging performed during life accurately predicts the presence of β-amyloid in the brain at autopsy.
Prospective clinical evaluation conducted February 2009 through March 2010 of florbetapir-PET imaging performed on 35 patients from hospice, long-term care, and community health care facilities near the end of their lives (6 patients to establish the protocol and 29 to validate) compared with immunohistochemistry and silver stain measures of brain β-amyloid after their death used as the reference standard. PET images were also obtained in 74 young individuals (18-50 years) presumed free of brain amyloid to better understand the frequency of a false-positive interpretation of a florbetapir-PET image.
Correlation of florbetapir-PET image interpretation (based on the median of 3 nuclear medicine physicians' ratings) and semiautomated quantification of cortical retention with postmortem β-amyloid burden, neuritic amyloid plaque density, and neuropathological diagnosis of Alzheimer disease in the first 35 participants autopsied (out of 152 individuals enrolled in the PET pathological correlation study).
Florbetapir-PET imaging was performed a mean of 99 days (range, 1-377 days) before death for the 29 individuals in the primary analysis cohort. Fifteen of the 29 individuals (51.7%) met pathological criteria for Alzheimer disease. Both visual interpretation of the florbetapir-PET images and mean quantitative estimates of cortical uptake were correlated with presence and quantity of β-amyloid pathology at autopsy as measured by immunohistochemistry (Bonferroni ρ, 0.78 95% confidence interval, 0.58-0.89; P <.001) and silver stain neuritic plaque score (Bonferroni ρ, 0.71 95% confidence interval, 0.47-0.86; P <.001). Florbetapir-PET images and postmortem results rated as positive or negative for β-amyloid agreed in 96% of the 29 individuals in the primary analysis cohort. The florbetapir-PET image was rated as amyloid negative in the 74 younger individuals in the nonautopsy cohort.
Florbetapir-PET imaging was correlated with the presence and density of β-amyloid. These data provide evidence that a molecular imaging procedure can identify β-amyloid pathology in the brains of individuals during life. Additional studies are required to understand the appropriate use of florbetapir-PET imaging in the clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer disease and for the prediction of progression to dementia.
Researchers have long sought a treatment for Alzheimer's disease that could target the biological underpinnings of the condition and slow cognitive decline and its disabling consequences in ...definitive clinical trials. ...it confirms the hypothesis that certain Aß aggregates are involved in the development, treatment and potential prevention of Alzheimer's disease. ...it will help researchers and clinicians to identify those Aß, tau, neuroinflammatory or neurodegenerative biomarker outcome measurements that are reasonably likely to be associated with a treatment's clinical benefit.
Plasma phosphorylated tau181 (P-tau181) might be increased in Alzheimer's disease (AD), but its usefulness for differential diagnosis and prognosis is unclear. We studied plasma P-tau181 in three ...cohorts, with a total of 589 individuals, including cognitively unimpaired participants and patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), AD dementia and non-AD neurodegenerative diseases. Plasma P-tau181 was increased in preclinical AD and further increased at the MCI and dementia stages. It correlated with CSF P-tau181 and predicted positive Tau positron emission tomography (PET) scans (area under the curve (AUC) = 0.87-0.91 for different brain regions). Plasma P-tau181 differentiated AD dementia from non-AD neurodegenerative diseases with an accuracy similar to that of Tau PET and CSF P-tau181 (AUC = 0.94-0.98), and detected AD neuropathology in an autopsy-confirmed cohort. High plasma P-tau181 was associated with subsequent development of AD dementia in cognitively unimpaired and MCI subjects. In conclusion, plasma P-tau181 is a noninvasive diagnostic and prognostic biomarker of AD, which may be useful in clinical practice and trials.
With the onset of prevention trials for individuals at high risk for Alzheimer disease, there is increasing need for accurate risk prediction to inform study design and enrollment, but available risk ...estimates are limited. We developed risk estimates for the incidence of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia among cognitively unimpaired individuals by APOE-e4 dose for the genetic disclosure process of the Alzheimer's Prevention Initiative Generation Study, a prevention trial in cognitively unimpaired APOE-e4/e4 homozygote individuals.
We included cognitively unimpaired individuals aged 60-75 y, consistent with Generation Study eligibility criteria, from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center (NACC) (n = 5,073, 158 APOE-e4/e4), the Rotterdam Study (n = 6,399, 156 APOE-e4/e4), the Framingham Heart Study (n = 4,078, 67 APOE-e4/e4), and the Sacramento Area Latino Study on Aging (SALSA) (n = 1,294, 11 APOE-e4/e4). We computed stratified cumulative incidence curves by age (60-64, 65-69, 70-75 y) and APOE-e4 dose, adjusting for the competing risk of mortality, and determined risk of MCI and/or dementia by genotype and baseline age. We also used subdistribution hazard regression to model relative hazard based on age, APOE genotype, sex, education, family history of dementia, vascular risk, subjective memory concerns, and baseline cognitive performance. The four cohorts varied considerably in age, education, ethnicity/race, and APOE-e4 allele frequency. Overall, cumulative incidence was uniformly higher in NACC than in the population-based cohorts. Among APOE-e4/e4 individuals, 5-y cumulative incidence was as follows: in the 60-64-y age stratum, it ranged from 0% to 5.88% in the three population-based cohorts versus 23.06% in NACC; in the 65-69-y age stratum, from 9.42% to 10.39% versus 34.62%; and in the 70-75-y age stratum, from 18.64% to 33.33% versus 38.34%. Five-year incidence of dementia was negligible except for APOE-e4/e4 individuals and those over 70 y. Lifetime incidence (to age 80-85 y) of MCI or dementia for the APOE-e4/e4 individuals in the long-term Framingham and Rotterdam cohorts was 34.69%-38.45% at age 60-64 y, 30.76%-40.26% at 65-69 y, and 33.3%-35.17% at 70-75 y. Confidence limits for these estimates are often wide, particularly for APOE-e4/e4 individuals and for the dementia outcome at 5 y. In regression models, APOE-e4 dose and age both consistently increased risk, as did lower education, subjective memory concerns, poorer baseline cognitive performance, and family history of dementia. We discuss several limitations of the study, including the small numbers of APOE-e4/e4 individuals, missing data and differential dropout, limited ethnic and racial diversity, and differences in definitions of exposure and outcome variables.
Estimates of the absolute risk of MCI or dementia, particularly over short time intervals, are sensitive to sampling and a variety of methodological factors. Nonetheless, such estimates were fairly consistent across the population-based cohorts, and lower than those from a convenience cohort and those estimated in prior studies-with implications for informed consent and design for clinical trials targeting high-risk individuals.
There are limitations in current diagnostic testing approaches for Alzheimer disease (AD).
To examine plasma tau phosphorylated at threonine 217 (P-tau217) as a diagnostic biomarker for AD.
Three ...cross-sectional cohorts: an Arizona-based neuropathology cohort (cohort 1), including 34 participants with AD and 47 without AD (dates of enrollment, May 2007-January 2019); the Swedish BioFINDER-2 cohort (cohort 2), including cognitively unimpaired participants (n = 301) and clinically diagnosed patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (n = 178), AD dementia (n = 121), and other neurodegenerative diseases (n = 99) (April 2017-September 2019); and a Colombian autosomal-dominant AD kindred (cohort 3), including 365 PSEN1 E280A mutation carriers and 257 mutation noncarriers (December 2013-February 2017).
Plasma P-tau217.
Primary outcome was the discriminative accuracy of plasma P-tau217 for AD (clinical or neuropathological diagnosis). Secondary outcome was the association with tau pathology (determined using neuropathology or positron emission tomography PET).
Mean age was 83.5 (SD, 8.5) years in cohort 1, 69.1 (SD, 10.3) years in cohort 2, and 35.8 (SD, 10.7) years in cohort 3; 38% were women in cohort 1, 51% in cohort 2, and 57% in cohort 3. In cohort 1, antemortem plasma P-tau217 differentiated neuropathologically defined AD from non-AD (area under the curve AUC, 0.89 95% CI, 0.81-0.97) with significantly higher accuracy than plasma P-tau181 and neurofilament light chain (NfL) (AUC range, 0.50-0.72; P < .05). The discriminative accuracy of plasma P-tau217 in cohort 2 for clinical AD dementia vs other neurodegenerative diseases (AUC, 0.96 95% CI, 0.93-0.98) was significantly higher than plasma P-tau181, plasma NfL, and MRI measures (AUC range, 0.50-0.81; P < .001) but not significantly different compared with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) P-tau217, CSF P-tau181, and tau-PET (AUC range, 0.90-0.99; P > .15). In cohort 3, plasma P-tau217 levels were significantly greater among PSEN1 mutation carriers, compared with noncarriers, from approximately 25 years and older, which is 20 years prior to estimated onset of MCI among mutation carriers. Plasma P-tau217 levels correlated with tau tangles in participants with (Spearman ρ = 0.64; P < .001), but not without (Spearman ρ = 0.15; P = .33), β-amyloid plaques in cohort 1. In cohort 2, plasma P-tau217 discriminated abnormal vs normal tau-PET scans (AUC, 0.93 95% CI, 0.91-0.96) with significantly higher accuracy than plasma P-tau181, plasma NfL, CSF P-tau181, CSF Aβ42:Aβ40 ratio, and MRI measures (AUC range, 0.67-0.90; P < .05), but its performance was not significantly different compared with CSF P-tau217 (AUC, 0.96; P = .22).
Among 1402 participants from 3 selected cohorts, plasma P-tau217 discriminated AD from other neurodegenerative diseases, with significantly higher accuracy than established plasma- and MRI-based biomarkers, and its performance was not significantly different from key CSF- or PET-based measures. Further research is needed to optimize the assay, validate the findings in unselected and diverse populations, and determine its potential role in clinical care.
Investigators have long suspected that pathogenic microbes might contribute to the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) although definitive evidence has not been presented. Whether such ...findings represent a causal contribution, or reflect opportunistic passengers of neurodegeneration, is also difficult to resolve. We constructed multiscale networks of the late-onset AD-associated virome, integrating genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and histopathological data across four brain regions from human post-mortem tissue. We observed increased human herpesvirus 6A (HHV-6A) and human herpesvirus 7 (HHV-7) from subjects with AD compared with controls. These results were replicated in two additional, independent and geographically dispersed cohorts. We observed regulatory relationships linking viral abundance and modulators of APP metabolism, including induction of APBB2, APPBP2, BIN1, BACE1, CLU, PICALM, and PSEN1 by HHV-6A. This study elucidates networks linking molecular, clinical, and neuropathological features with viral activity and is consistent with viral activity constituting a general feature of AD.
•Common viral species frequently detected in normal, aging brain•Increased HHV-6A and HHV-7 in brains of subjects with Alzheimer’s disease (AD)•Findings were replicated in two additional, independent cohorts•Multiscale networks reveal viral regulation of AD risk, and APP processing genes
Readhead et al. construct multiscale networks of the late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-associated virome and observe pathogenic regulation of molecular, clinical, and neuropathological networks by several common viruses, particularly human herpesvirus 6A and human herpesvirus 7.
Summary Background Fibrillar amyloid-β (Aβ) is thought to begin accumulating in the brain many years before the onset of clinical impairment in patients with Alzheimer's disease. By assessing the ...accumulation of Aβ in people at risk of genetic forms of Alzheimer's disease, we can identify how early preclinical changes start in individuals certain to develop dementia later in life. We sought to characterise the age-related accumulation of Aβ deposition in presenilin 1 (PSEN1) E280A mutation carriers across the spectrum of preclinical disease. Methods Between Aug 1 and Dec 6, 2011, members of the familial Alzheimer's disease Colombian kindred aged 18–60 years were recruited from the Alzheimer's Prevention Initiative's registry at the University of Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia. Cross-sectional assessment using florbetapir PET was done in symptomatic mutation carriers with mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia, asymptomatic carriers, and asymptomatic non-carriers. These assessments were done at the Banner Alzheimer's Institute in Phoenix, AZ, USA. A cortical grey matter mask consisting of six predefined regions.was used to measure mean cortical florbetapir PET binding. Cortical-to-pontine standard-uptake value ratios were used to characterise the cross-sectional accumulation of fibrillar Aβ deposition in carriers and non-carriers with regression analysis and to estimate the trajectories of fibrillar Aβ deposition. Findings We enrolled a cohort of 11 symptomatic individuals, 19 presymptomatic mutation carriers, and 20 asymptomatic non-carriers, ranging in age from 20 to 56 years. There was greater florbetapir binding in asymptomatic PSEN1 E280A mutation carriers than in age matched non-carriers. Fibrillar Aβ began to accumulate in PSEN 1E280A mutation carriers at a mean age of 28·2 years (95% CI 27·3–33·4), about 16 years and 21 years before the predicted median ages at mild cognitive impairment and dementia onset, respectively.18 F florbetapir binding rose steeply over the next 9·4 years and plateaued at a mean age of 37·6 years (95% CI 35·3–40·2), about 6 and 11 years before the expected respective median ages at mild cognitive impairment and dementia onset. Prominent florbetapir binding was seen in the anterior and posterior cingulate, precuneus, and parietotemporal and frontal grey matter, as well as in the basal ganglia. Binding in the basal ganglia was not seen earlier or more prominently than in other regions. Interpretation These findings contribute to the understanding of preclinical familial Alzheimer's disease and help set the stage for assessment of amyloid-modifying treatments in the prevention of familial Alzheimer's disease. Funding Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, Banner Alzheimer's Foundation, Nomis Foundation, Anonymous Foundation, Forget Me Not Initiative, Colciencias, National Institute on Aging, and the State of Arizona.
We have previously demonstrated cross-sectional differences in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measurements of white matter myelin and gray matter in infants with or without the apolipoprotein ε4 ...allele, a major genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD). In this study, we sought to compare longitudinal MRI white matter myelin and cognitive-behavioral changes in infants and young children with and without this allele. Serial MRI and cognitive tests were obtained on 223 infants and young children, including 74 ε4 carriers and 149 non-carriers, 2–68 months of age, matched for age, gestational duration, birth weight, sex ratio, maternal age, education, and socioeconomic status. Automated brain mapping algorithms and non-linear mixed models were used to characterize and compare trajectories of white matter myelin and cognitive-behavioral test scores. The APOE ε4 carriers had statistically significant differences in white matter myelin development, in the uncinate fasciculus, temporal lobe, internal capsule and occipital lobe. Additionally, ε4 carriers had a slightly greater rate of development in early learning composite a surrogate measure of IQ representative of expressive language, receptive language, fine motor, and visual skills, but displayed slightly lower non verbal development quotient scores a composite measure of fine motor and visual skills across the entire age range. This study supports the possibility that ε4 carriers have slightly altered rates of white matter and cognitive development in childhood. It continues to raise questions about the role of APOE in human brain development and the relevance of these developmental differences to the predisposition to AD.
Abstract The Functional Activities Questionnaire (FAQ) and Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale—cognitive subscale (ADAS-cog) are frequently used indices of cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease ...(AD). The goal of this study was to compare FDG-PET and clinical measurements in a large sample of elderly subjects with memory disturbance. We examined relationships between glucose metabolism in FDG-PET regions of interest (FDG-ROIs), and ADAS-cog and FAQ scores in AD and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients enrolled in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). Low glucose metabolism at baseline predicted subsequent ADAS-cog and FAQ decline. In addition, longitudinal glucose metabolism decline was associated with concurrent ADAS-cog and FAQ decline. Finally, a power analysis revealed that FDG-ROI values have greater statistical power than ADAS-cog to detect attenuation of cognitive decline in AD and MCI patients. Glucose metabolism is a sensitive measure of change in cognition and functional ability in AD and MCI, and has value in predicting future cognitive decline.
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