Biomarker-guided clustering of Alzheimer's disease clinical syndromes.

• Alzheimer's disease (AD) neuropathology is extremely heterogeneous, and the evolution from preclinical to mild cognitive impairment until dementia is driven by interacting genetic/biological mechanisms not fully captured by current clinical/research criteria. We characterized the heterogeneous "construct" of AD through a cerebrospinal fluid biomarker-guided stratification approach. We analyzed 5 validated pathophysiological cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers (Aβ1-42, t-tau, p-tau181, NFL, YKL-40) in 113 participants (healthy controls [N= 20], subjective memory complainers [N= 36], mild cognitive impairment [N= 20], and AD dementia [N= 37], age: 66.7 ± 10.4, 70.4 ± 7.7, 71.7 ± 8.4, 76.2 ± 3.5years [mean ± SD], respectively) using Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise, which does not require a priori determination of the number of clusters. We found 5 distinct clusters (sizes: N= 38, 16, 24, 14, and 21) whose composition was independent of phenotypical groups. Two clusters showed biomarker profiles linked to neurodegenerative processes not associated with classical AD-related pathophysiology. One cluster was characterized by the neuroinflammation biomarker YKL-40. Combining nonlinear data aggregation with informative biomarkers can generate novel patient strata which are representative of cellular/molecular pathophysiology and may aid in predicting disease evolution and mechanistic drug response.

Subject headings

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Medicinska och farmaceutiska grundvetenskaper -- Neurovetenskaper (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Basic Medicine -- Neurosciences (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)