plasma Phospho-tau217 in Alzheimer Disease (AD)

Last edited 02/2023 and last reviewed 02/2023

Alzheimer disease (AD) pathology starts with a prolonged phase of beta-amyloid (Abeta) accumulation without symptoms

• importance of this presymptomatic, or preclinical, stage has been reported by studies finding that Abeta measured by cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers or positron emission tomography (PET) predicted cognitive decline in people who were cognitively unimpaired (CU)
  
  
• plasma P-tau217 predicted cognitive decline in patients with preclinical AD (1)
  • findings suggest that plasma P-tau217 may be used as a complement to CSF or PET for participant selection in clinical trials of novel disease-modifying treatments
    
    
• been shown that plasma P-tau217 differentiated clinically diagnosed AD dementia from other neurodegenerative disorders (2)
  • also distinguished participants with neuropathologically defined AD from participants without diagnostic levels of AD histopathology
  • plasma P-tau217 levels correlated with cerebral tau tangles and discriminated abnormal vs normal tau-PET scans with significantly higher accuracy than plasma P-tau181, plasma NfL, CSF P-tau181, CSF Abeta42:Abeta40 ratio, and MRI measures

Reference:

• Mattsson-Carlgren N et al. Prediction of Longitudinal Cognitive Decline in Preclinical Alzheimer Disease Using Plasma Biomarkers. JAMA Neurol. Published online February 06, 2023. doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2022.5272
• Palmqvist S, Janelidze S, Quiroz YT, Zetterberg H, Lopera F, Stomrud E, Su Y, Chen Y, Serrano GE, Leuzy A, Mattsson-Carlgren N, Strandberg O, Smith R, Villegas A, Sepulveda-Falla D, Chai X, Proctor NK, Beach TG, Blennow K, Dage JL, Reiman EM, Hansson O. Discriminative Accuracy of Plasma Phospho-tau217 for Alzheimer Disease vs Other Neurodegenerative Disorders. JAMA. 2020 Aug 25;324(8):772-781. doi: 10.1001/jama.2020.