Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Professor Alan ThomasORCiD, Professor Lynn RochesterORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2017 - IOS Press and the authors. Background: Combining PET amyloid-β (Aβ) and tau imaging may be critical for tracking disease progression in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Objective:We sought to characterize the relationship betweenAβ and tau ligands as well as with other measures of pathology. Methods: We conducted a multi-center observational study in early AD (MMSE > 20) participants aged 50 to 85 y. The schedule included cognitive assessments (ADAS-Cog) and CSF measurement of A- and tau at baseline and 6 months; PET-CT imaging with Aβ ([18F]AV45) and tau ([18F]AV1451) ligands at baseline. Results: 22 participants took part in the study with 20 completing its 6-month duration and 12 having both tau and amyloid PET. The PET biomarker analysis revealed a strong negative correlation between age and tau in multiple regions. Entorhinal cortex tau and age interacted significantly in terms of cognitive change over 6 months which may have been to older participants deteriorating faster despite lower levels of cortical tau. Cortical Aβ associated with entorhinal cortex tau while CSF tau/Aβ ratio correlated strongly with cortical tau but not Aβ Conclusion: The negative relationship between age and cortical tau whereby younger patients with mild AD had relatively greater tau burden is potentially important. It suggests that younger-age onset AD may be primarily driven by tau pathology while AD developing later may depend on a multitude of pathological mechanisms. These data also suggest that PET-tau performs better than PET-amyloid in predicting the best validated AD diagnostic marker'the CSF total tau/Aβ ratio.
Author(s): Koychev I, Gunn RN, Firouzian A, Lawson J, Zamboni G, Ridha B, Sahakian BJ, Rowe JB, Thomas A, Rochester L, Ffytche D, Howard R, Zetterberg H, MacKay C, Lovestone S
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Alzheimer's Disease
Year: 2017
Volume: 60
Issue: 1
Pages: 283-293
Online publication date: 29/08/2017
Acceptance date: 30/06/2017
Date deposited: 18/10/2017
ISSN (print): 1387-2877
ISSN (electronic): 1875-8908
Publisher: IOS Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.3233/JAD-170129
DOI: 10.3233/JAD-170129
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric