Description: One-Stop Shop: 18 F-Flortaucipir PET Differentiates Amyloid-Positive and -Negative Forms of Neurodegenerative Diseases

This title appears in the Scientific Report : 2021

One-Stop Shop: 18 F-Flortaucipir PET Differentiates Amyloid-Positive and -Negative Forms of Neurodegenerative Diseases

Tau protein aggregations are a hallmark of amyloid-associated Alzheimer disease and some forms of non–amyloid-associated frontotemporal lobar degeneration. In recent years, several tracers for in vivo tau imaging have been under evaluation. This study investigated the ability of 18F-flortaucipir PET...

Personal Name(s):	Hammes, Jochen (Corresponding author)
	Bischof, Gérard N. / Bohn, Karl P. / Onur, Özgür / Schneider, Anja / Fliessbach, Klaus / Hönig, Merle C / Jessen, Frank / Neumaier, Bernd / Drzezga, Alexander / van Eimeren, Thilo
Contributing Institute:	Nuklearchemie; INM-5 Molekulare Organisation des Gehirns; INM-2 Kognitive Neurowissenschaften; INM-3
Published in:	Journal of nuclear medicine, 62 (2021) 2, S. 240 - 246
Imprint:	New York, NY Soc. 2021
DOI:	10.2967/jnumed.120.244061
Document Type:	Journal Article
Research Program:	Decoding Brain Organization and Dysfunction
Link:	Get full text OpenAccess
	Publikationsportal JuSER

Please use the identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/27760 in citations.
Please use the identifier: http://dx.doi.org/10.2967/jnumed.120.244061 in citations.

Tau protein aggregations are a hallmark of amyloid-associated Alzheimer disease and some forms of non–amyloid-associated frontotemporal lobar degeneration. In recent years, several tracers for in vivo tau imaging have been under evaluation. This study investigated the ability of 18F-flortaucipir PET not only to assess tau positivity but also to differentiate between amyloid-positive and -negative forms of neurodegeneration on the basis of different 18F-flortaucipir PET signatures. Methods: The 18F-flortaucipir PET data of 35 patients with amyloid-positive neurodegeneration, 19 patients with amyloid-negative neurodegeneration, and 17 healthy controls were included in a data-driven scaled subprofile model (SSM)/principal-component analysis (PCA) identifying spatial covariance patterns. SSM/PCA pattern expression strengths were tested for their ability to predict amyloid status in a receiver-operating-characteristic analysis and validated with a leave-one-out approach. Results: Pattern expression strengths predicted amyloid status with a sensitivity of 0.94 and a specificity of 0.83. A support vector machine classification based on pattern expression strengths in 2 different SSM/PCA components yielded a prediction accuracy of 98%. Anatomically, prediction performance was driven by parietooccipital gray matter in amyloid-positive patients versus predominant white matter binding in amyloid-negative patients. Conclusion: SSM/PCA-derived binding patterns of 18F-flortaucipir differentiate between amyloid-positive and -negative neurodegenerative diseases with high accuracy. 18F-flortaucipir PET alone may convey additional information equivalent to that from amyloid PET. Together with a perfusion-weighted early-phase acquisition (18F-FDG PET–equivalent), a single scan potentially contains comprehensive information on amyloid (A), tau (T), and neurodegeneration (N) status as required by recent biomarker classification algorithms (A/T/N).