Plasma Phosphorylated Tau 217 in Participants at Risk for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.
Plasma p-tau217 accurately detects beta-amyloid pathology in people at chronic traumatic encephalopathy risk
Plasma Phosphorylated Tau 217 in Participants at Risk for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.
IMPORTANCE: In vivo biomarkers for detecting neuropathologies from repetitive head impacts (repetitive head impacts), including chronic traumatic encephalopathy (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), are needed.
To evaluate the utility of plasma phosphorylated tau 217 (p-tau217), assess its performance as a beta-amyloid (Aβ) biomarker in participants with repetitive head impacts exposure at risk for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and explore concordance with chronic traumatic encephalopathy neuropathology in a postmortem subsample.
DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This longitudinal, multicenter, case-control study used data from the Diagnostics, Imaging, and Genetics Network for the Objective Study and Evaluation of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (DIAGNOSE chronic traumatic encephalopathy) Research Project, collected from September 2016 to October 2023.
higher plasma p-tau217 tracks with amyloid PET positivity, close to cerebrospinal fluid markers
Among 231 participants (mean [SD] age, 57.75 [8.25] years), 177 were former football players (117 professional and 60 college) and 54 were unexposed participants.
Former football players had higher baseline mean (SD) p-tau217 concentrations than unexposed participants (0.35 [0.26] pg/mL vs 0.27 [0.14] pg/mL; P = .008), although this was driven by a higher proportion of Aβ-PET-positive participants among former players.
The findings of this study suggest that plasma p-tau217 concentration is unlikely to be useful for the detection of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but it does show utility for ruling out Aβ pathology in participants at risk for chronic traumatic encephalopathy.