Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 16, 2025
Hybrid PET/MRI Imaging of Alzheimer's Disease Based on 18F-AV-1451
Published on: April 18, 2025
Amyloid and tau-PET in early-onset AD: Baseline data from the Longitudinal Early-onset Alzheimer's Disease Study
Hanna Cho1,2,3, Nidhi S Mundada1, Liana G Apostolova4,5,6
1Memory and Aging Center, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA.
Introduction:
We aimed to describe baseline amyloid-beta (Aβ) and tau-positron emission tomograrphy (PET) from Longitudinal Early-onset Alzheimer's Disease Study (LEADS), a prospective multi-site observational study of sporadic early-onset Alzheimer's disease (EOAD).
Methods:
We analyzed baseline [18F]Florbetaben (Aβ) and [18F]Flortaucipir (tau)-PET from cognitively impaired participants with a clinical diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or AD dementia aged < 65 years. Florbetaben scans were used to distinguish cognitively impaired participants with EOAD (Aβ+) from EOnonAD (Aβ-) based on the combination of visual read by expert reader and image quantification.
Results:
243/321 (75.7%) of participants were assigned to the EOAD group based on amyloid-PET; 231 (95.1%) of them were tau-PET positive (A+T+). Tau-PET signal was elevated across cortical regions with a parietal-predominant pattern, and higher burden was observed in younger and female EOAD participants.
Discussion:
LEADS data emphasizes the importance of biomarkers to enhance diagnostic accuracy in EOAD. The advanced tau-PET binding at baseline might have implications for therapeutic strategies in patients with EOAD.
Highlights:
72% of patients with clinical EOAD were positive on both amyloid- and tau-PET. Amyloid-positive patients with EOAD had high tau-PET signal across cortical regions. In EOAD, tau-PET mediated the relationship between amyloid-PET and MMSE. Among EOAD patients, younger onset and female sex were associated with higher tau-PET.
