CNS-selective plasma p-tau217 accurately captures Alzheimer's disease pathology and progression

Brain-derived plasma p-tau217% more accurately captures Alzheimer’s disease pathology and clinical AD than conventional plasma p-tau217, with higher discriminative accuracy and sensitivity/specificity across multiple cohorts.

• Why it matters: Standard p-tau217 can reflect both CNS and peripheral sources, which may reduce specificity in older adults with common comorbidities and limit biologically grounded diagnosis and prognosis.
• What they did: The study quantified the CNS-derived fraction of circulating tau phosphorylated at threonine 217 as brain-derived p-tau217% and tested it in neuropathology-defined, imaging-characterized, and memory clinic cohorts, including targeted proteomic comparisons.
• The result: Brain-derived p-tau217% showed larger effect sizes for identifying AD pathology and clinical AD, predicted future progression more robustly over follow-up up to two decades, and maintained high performance in older adults with diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.