Comparison of Amyloid β and Tau Spread Models in Alzheimer's Disease.
Tau and amyloid β (Aβ), 2 key pathogenic proteins in Alzheimer's disease (AD), reportedly spread throughout the brain as the disease progresses. Models of how these pathogenic proteins spread from affected to unaffected areas had been proposed based on the observation that these proteins could transmit to other regions either through neural fibers (transneuronal spread model) or through extracellular space (local spread model). In this study, we modeled the spread of tau and Aβ using a graph theoretical approach based on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. We tested whether these models predict the distribution of tau and Aβ in the brains of AD spectrum patients. To assess the models' performance, we calculated spatial correlation between the model-predicted map and the actual map from tau and amyloid positron emission tomography. The transneuronal spread model predicted the distribution of tau and Aβ deposition with significantly higher accuracy than the local spread model. Compared with tau, the local spread model also predicted a comparable portion of Aβ deposition. These findings provide evidence of transneuronal spread of AD pathogenic proteins in a large-scale brain network and furthermore suggest different contributions of spread models for tau and Aβ in AD.
['Kim|Hang-Rai|HR|', 'Lee|Peter|P|', 'Seo|Sang Won|SW|', 'Roh|Jee Hoon|JH|', 'Oh|Minyoung|M|', 'Oh|Jungsu S|JS|', 'Oh|Seung Jun|SJ|', 'Kim|Jae Seung|JS|', 'Jeong|Yong|Y|']
D000368:Aged D000369:Aged, 80 and over D000544:Alzheimer Disease D016229:Amyloid beta-Peptides D000818:Animals D001921:Brain D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D008959:Models, Neurological D009474:Neurons D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography D016875:tau Proteins
amyloid β tau resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging positron emission tomography Alzheimer’s disease