Event-related Potentials Improve the Efficiency of Cerebrospinal Fluid Biomarkers for Differential Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease

Title:Event-related Potentials Improve the Efficiency of Cerebrospinal Fluid Biomarkers for Differential Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease

Volume: 15 Issue: 13

Author(s): Mirjana Babić Leko, Magdalena Krbot Skorić, Nataša Klepac, Fran Borovečki, Lea Langer Horvat, Željka Vogrinc, Zdenko Sonicki, Patrick R. Hof and Goran Šimić *

Affiliation:

• Department of Neuroscience, Croatian Institute for Brain Research, University of Zagreb School of Medicine, Zagreb,Croatia

Keywords: Alzheimer's disease, amyloid beta peptides, biomarkers, evoked potentials, tau proteins, cerebrospinal fluid.

Abstract: Introduction: The pathological process of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the brain likely begins 20-30 years earlier than the emergence of its first clinical symptoms and symptoms of AD often overlap with the symptoms of other primary causes of dementia. Therefore, it is crucially important to improve early and differential diagnosis of the disease. Event-related potentials (ERP) measured non-invasively by electroencephalography have shown diagnostic potential in AD.

Aims: The aim of this study was to compare the efficiency of P300 and N200 potentials and reaction time (RT) with commonly used protein biomarkers measured in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), including amyloid β peptide (β1-42), total tau (t-tau), tau protein phosphorylated at threonine 181 (p-tau181), tau protein phosphorylated at serine 199 (p-tau199), tau protein phosphorylated at threonine 231 (p-tau231), and visinin-like protein 1 (VILIP-1) in differential diagnosis of AD in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD patients.

Subjects: The study involved 49 AD patients, 28 patients with MCI, 4 healthy control subjects and 16 patients with other primary causes of dementia.

Results: ERP (P300RT, N200RT, P300 counting and N200 counting) showed a moderate to strong correlation with protein CSF biomarkers. We confirmed previous observations of moderate to strong correlation between ERP and neuropsychological testing and showed that P300 latency and RT are shortened in AD patients on therapy with acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. Using ERP and RT, a predictive model for determination of AD likelihood in MCI patients was developed, detecting 56.3% of MCI patients with high risk for development of AD in our cohort. MCI patients with pathological levels of Aβ1-42 had prolonged P300 latency, indicating that a combination of ERP and CSF protein biomarkers could improve the differential diagnosis of AD in MCI patients. Additionally, the results suggested the potential of P300 latency in differentiating AD and FTD patients.

Conclusion: Our data provide possible solutions for improvement of differential diagnosis of AD, and reveal that the diagnostic efficiency of CSF protein biomarkers t-tau, p-tau181, p-tau199, p-tau231 and VILIP-1 could be improved by adding ERP in clinical practice.

Cite this article as:

Leko Babić Mirjana , Skorić Krbot Magdalena , Klepac Nataša , Borovečki Fran , Horvat Langer Lea , Vogrinc Željka , Sonicki Zdenko , Hof R. Patrick and Šimić Goran *, Event-related Potentials Improve the Efficiency of Cerebrospinal Fluid Biomarkers for Differential Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease, Current Alzheimer Research 2018; 15 (13) . https://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1567205015666180911151116