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Published on: March 21, 2017
Measurement batch differences and between-batch conversion of Alzheimer's disease cerebrospinal fluid biomarker
Yue Ma1,2, Derek L Norton2,3, Carol A Van Hulle1,2
1Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology Department of Medicine University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health Madison Wisconsin USA.
Introduction:
Batch differences in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarker measurement can introduce bias into analyses for Alzheimer's disease studies. We evaluated and adjusted for batch differences using statistical methods.
Methods:
A total of 792 CSF samples from 528 participants were assayed in three batches for 12 biomarkers and 3 biomarker ratios. Batch differences were assessed using Bland-Altman plot, paired t test, Pitman-Morgan test, and linear regression. Generalized linear models were applied to convert CSF values between batches.
Results:
We found statistically significant batch differences for all biomarkers and ratios, except that neurofilament light was comparable between batches 1 and 2. The conversion models generally had high R 2 except for converting P-tau between batches 1 and 3.
Discussion:
Between-batch conversion allows harmonized CSF values to be used in the same analysis. Such method may be applied to adjust for other sources of variability in measuring CSF or other types of biomarkers.
