Alzheimer & Dementia: Head-to-head comparison of plasma and CSF biomarker, phosphorylated tau protein immunoassay, in memory clinics

Recent research has focused on developing blood biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases, and these efforts have yielded important progress
.
Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers and amyloid β (Aβ) positron emission tomography (PET) remain established tests
to support in vivo diagnosis of AD.
It has been suggested that a direct comparison of the main blood phosphorylated tau immunoassays in the memory outpatient population is needed to understand possible differences
.
Therefore, scholars from Sweden carried out relevant research
.

In the BIODEGMAR study, 197 participants with cognitive problems were divided into Alzheimer's disease (AD) and non-AD cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) data groups
based on the ratio of amyloid β42/phosphorylated tau (Aβ42/p-tau).
The researchers performed head-to-head comparisons of 9 plasma and 9 CSF tau immunoassays and determined their accuracy
for discriminating abnormalities in CSF Aβ42/p-tau ratios.

The results showed that all studied plasma tau biomarkers were significantly higher in the AD CSF lineage group than in the non-AD CSF lineage group, and the abnormal CSF Aβ42/p-tau ratio
could be significantly identified.
For plasma p-tau biomarkers, Janssen p-tau217 (r=0.
76; area under the curve [AUC]=0.
96), ADx p-tau181 (r=0.
73; AUC=0.
94) and Eli Lilly p-tau217 (r=0.
73; AUC=0.
94) had high
identification accuracy.

It follows that several plasma p-tau biomarkers can be used as independent biomarkers in specialized memory clinics to detect biodefined AD
.

References:

Plasma and CSF biomarkers in a memory clinic: Head-to-head comparison of phosphorylated tau immunoassays.
https://doi.
org/10.
1002/alz.
12841