Temporal Modeling of Amyloid and Tau Trajectories in Alzheimer's Disease using PET and Plasma Biomarkers

To compare PET and plasma-based temporal modeling of amyloid and tau biomarkers in Alzheimer's disease.

Longitudinal amyloid PET, ¹⁸F-flortaucipir tau-PET, and Fujirebio Lumipulse plasma p-tau₂₁₇ from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) and University of Pennsylvania Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (Penn ADRC) were used to generate biomarker trajectory models using Sampled Iterative Local Approximation (SILA). SILA models using plasma p-tau₂₁₇ were compared to amyloid and tau PET-based models to estimate tau onset age (ETOA) and estimate amyloid onset age (EAOA), and factors influencing ETOA and time from ETOA to dementia were evaluated for PET and plasma-based models.

Plasma-based models generated similar results to PET for EAOA and ETOA, with stronger model agreement for ETOA than EAOA. Accuracy of estimated onset age compared to actual onset age was high within modality with slightly greater error when comparing across modalities (i.e. plasma to PET). For both plasma and PET models, earlier ETOA was associated with younger EAOA, female sex, and ≥1 ApoE ε4 allele. Earlier dementia onset after ETOA was associated with later ETOA for both plasma and PET models, while male sex was associated with shorter tau to dementia gap in plasma models.

Temporal modeling of plasma biomarkers provides comparable information to PET-based models, particularly for tau onset age. Plasma-based temporal modeling can serve as a widely accessible tool for clinical assessment of biological disease duration that places the patient on the disease timeline, which may allow for improved discussion of prognosis and treatment decisions.