engleski

Phosphorylated tau proteins in evaluation of patients with suspected dementia

One of the major goals of current clinical research in neurodegenerative diseases is early detection. The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of phosphorylated tau proteins reflect the phosphorylation state of tau in the brain. Our objective was to determine the diagnostic value of CSF total tau protein (t-tau), tau protein phosphorylated at threonine 181 and serine 199 (p-tau181 and p-tau199) in early-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD) versus normal controls (NC) and other primary causes of dementia such as frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and vascular dementia (VaD). Patients with probable and possible AD, as well as FTD, VaD, diffuse Lewy-body disease (DLBD) and NC were included in the study. CSF levels were measured using commercially available ELISA kits t-tau and p-tau199 (BioSource, Camarillo, CA, USA) and p-tau181 (Innogenetics, Ghent, Belgium). The median levels of t-tau and p-tau181 proteins studied were significantly elevated in patients with AD compared with other groups. Applied as a single marker, t-tau and p-tau181 reached specificity levels greater than 75% between AD and combined non-AD group when sensitivity was set at 85% or greater. Discrimination between AD and DLBD was maximized using p-tau181, while t-tau maximized separation between AD and VaD. P-tau199 showed low specificity in distinguishing AD from other groups and NC. Our results confirmed that t-tau and p-tau181 may be useful additional markers for distinguishing AD from other primary causes of dementia (such as DLBD and VaD).

tau protein; phosphorylation; cerebrospinal fluid; Alzheimer's disease; frontotemporal dementia; vascular dementia; diffuse Lewy-body disease

Časopis je indeksiran u Neuroscience Citation indexu i EMBASE/Excerpta Medica.