Acta neuropathologica
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Acta neuropathologica · Nov 2013
CSF α-synuclein improves diagnostic and prognostic performance of CSF tau and Aβ in Alzheimer's disease.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Lewy body diseases (LBD), e.g., Parkinson's disease (PD) dementia and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), are common causes of geriatric cognitive impairments. In addition, AD and LBD are often found in the same patients at autopsy; therefore, biomarkers that can detect the presence of both pathologies in living subjects are needed. In this investigation, we report the assessment of α-synuclein (α-syn) in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and its association with CSF total tau (t-tau), phosphorylated tau181 (p-tau181), and amyloid beta1-42 (Aβ1-42) in subjects of the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI; n = 389), with longitudinal clinical assessments. ⋯ Although a correlation was also noted between α-syn and p-tau181, there was a mismatch (α-syn-p-tau181-Mis), i.e., higher p-tau181 levels accompanied by lower α-syn levels in a subset of ADNI patients. We hypothesize that this α-syn-p-tau181-Mis is a CSF signature of concomitant LBD pathology in AD patients. Hence, we suggest that inclusion of measures of CSF α-syn and calculation of α-syn-p-tau181-Mis improves the diagnostic sensitivity/specificity of classic CSF AD biomarkers and better predicts longitudinal cognitive changes.