Comparison of Analytical Platforms for Cerebrospinal Fluid Measures of β-Amyloid 1-42, Total tau, and P-tau181 for Identifying Alzheimer Disease Amyloid Plaque Pathology

Abstract

Quiz Ref ID Alzheimer disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia in elderly persons, currently affects an estimated 35.6 million individuals worldwide, with numbers expected to triple and reach epidemic proportions by the year 2050 (http://www.alz.co.uk/research/statistics.html). Such an aggressive disease trajectory will have a devastating effect on patients, their caregivers, and health care resources as well as public health burden. Appreciation of the societal and economic implications of this projection and disappointing AD clinical trial results to date make it imperative that the AD research, clinical, and pharmaceutical communities work together to better identify those at the very earliest stages of the disease in concert with designing more effective clinical trial strategies. Quiz Ref ID Converging evidence suggests that AD pathology (amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles) begins to develop years, if not decades, before diagnosis of clinical dementia.^1-3 This disease state, AD pathology prior to the development of dementia symptoms, has been termed preclinical or presymptomatic AD. With this in mind, the AD field is experiencing a paradigm shift in the way therapeutic strategies are viewed, from cure to prevention, with the ultimate goal of intervening very early in the disease process (perhaps even at the initial preclinical stage) to prevent neurodegeneration and its clinical sequela, dementia.