Cerebrospinal fluid tau and beta-amyloid in Alzheimer patients, disease controls and an age-matched random sample

Neurobiol Aging. 2006 Sep;27(9):1202-11. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2005.06.005. Epub 2005 Aug 8.

Abstract

We prospectively evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)-beta-amyloid1-42 (Abeta42), -total-tau (tau) and -phosphorylated-tau181 (p-tau181) as measured by sandwich ELISAs in the clinical routine of a community state hospital to discriminate between patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), healthy controls (HC), non-AD-dementias, a group composed of various psychiatric disorders (non-AD-dementias, mental diseases) and an age-matched random sample (RS) (total N=219). By comparing patients with AD to HC as reference, tau revealed sensitivity (sens)/specificity (spec) of 88%/80%, p-tau(181) 88%/80%, tau/Abeta42-ratio 81%/85% and phospho-tau(181)/Abeta42-ratio 81%/78%. Discriminative power between HC and all dementias under investigation was estimated lower for tau (78%/77%) and p-tau(181) (73%/79%). Relative to patients with AD, ROC analysis for the RS revealed highest sens/spec for p-tau181 (79%/77%) and p-tau181/Abeta42 ratio (78%/75%). Differentiation between AD versus a group made of patients with various psychiatric disorders was optimised by using CSF-p-tau181 (80%/77%). Under clinical routine conditions current CSF-biomarkers show a substantial capacity to discriminate between AD and HC as reference and to mark off AD patients from RS and heterogeneous diagnostic groups composed of non-AD dementias and other psychiatric conditions. Despite a residual substantial overlap between the groups, we conclude that current CSF markers are well suited to support AD-related diagnostic procedures in every-day clinics.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study
  • Evaluation Study
  • Randomized Controlled Trial

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Alzheimer Disease / cerebrospinal fluid*
  • Alzheimer Disease / diagnosis
  • Amyloid beta-Peptides / cerebrospinal fluid*
  • Area Under Curve
  • Biomarkers / cerebrospinal fluid
  • Case-Control Studies
  • Dementia / cerebrospinal fluid
  • Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay / methods
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Peptide Fragments / cerebrospinal fluid*
  • Prospective Studies
  • ROC Curve
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • tau Proteins / cerebrospinal fluid*

Substances

  • Amyloid beta-Peptides
  • Biomarkers
  • Peptide Fragments
  • amyloid beta-protein (1-42)
  • tau Proteins