Development of thresholds and a visualization tool for use of a blood test in routine clinical dementia practice

Inge M.W. Verberk*, Jolien Jutte, Maurice Y. Kingma, Sinthujah Vigneswaran, Mariam M.T.E.E. Gouda, Marie Paule van Engelen, Daniel Alcolea, Javier Arranz, Juan Fortea, Alberto Lleó, Claire Chevalier, Moira Marizzoni, Elsmarieke M. van de Giessen, Afina W. Lemstra, Yolande A.L. Pijnenburg, Wiesje M. van der Flier, Anouk den Braber, David Wilson, Martijn C. Schut, Argonde C. van HartenCharlotte E. Teunissen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: We developed a multimarker blood test result interpretation tool for the clinical dementia practice, including phosphorylated (P-)tau181, amyloid-beta (Abeta)42/40, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), and neurofilament light (NfL). METHODS: We measured the plasma biomarkers with Simoa (n = 1199), applied LASSO regression for biomarker selection and receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analyses to determine diagnostic accuracy. We validated our findings in two independent cohorts and constructed a visualization approach. RESULTS: P-tau181, GFAP, and NfL were selected. This combination had area under the curve (AUC) = 83% to identify amyloid positivity in pre-dementia stages, AUC = 87%–89% to differentiate Alzheimer's or controls from frontotemporal dementia, AUC = 74%–76% to differentiate Alzheimer's or controls from dementia with Lewy bodies. Highly reproducible AUCs were obtained in independent cohorts. The resulting visualization tool includes UpSet plots to visualize the stand-alone biomarker results and density plots to visualize the biomarker results combined. DISCUSSION: Our multimarker blood test interpretation tool is ready for testing in real-world clinical dementia settings. Highlights: We developed a multimarker blood test interpretation tool for clinical dementia practice. Our interpretation tool includes plasma biomarkers P-tau, GFAP, and NfL. Our tool is particularly useful for Alzheimer's and frontotemporal dementia diagnosis.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)6115-6132
Number of pages18
JournalAlzheimer's and Dementia
Volume20
Issue number9
Early online date3 Aug 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Alzheimer's & Dementia published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Alzheimer's Association.

Keywords

  • Alzheimer
  • biomarker
  • blood test
  • dementia
  • glial fibrillary acidic protein
  • neurofilament light
  • phosphorylated tau
  • plasma

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