Objective

To characterize the shape of the trajectories of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) biomarkers as a function of MMSE.

Design

Longitudinal registries from the Mayo Clinic and the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI).

Patients

Two different samples (n=343 and n=598) were created that spanned the cognitive spectrum from normal to AD dementia. Subgroup analyses were performed in members of both cohorts (n=243 and n=328) who were amyloid positive at baseline.

Main Outcome Measures

The shape of biomarker trajectories as a function of MMSE, adjusted for age, was modeled and described as baseline (cross-sectional) and within-subject longitudinal effects. Biomarkers evaluated were cerebro spinal fluid (CSF) Aβ42 and tau; amyloid and fluoro deoxyglucose position emission tomography (PET) imaging, and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Results

Baseline biomarker values generally worsened (i.e., non-zero slope) with lower baseline MMSE. Baseline hippocampal volume, amyloid PET and FDG PET values plateaued (i.e., non-linear slope) with lower MMSE in one or more analyses. Longitudinally, within-subject rates of biomarker change were associated with worsening MMSE. Non-constant within-subject rates (deceleration) of biomarker change were found in only one model.

Conclusions

Biomarker trajectory shapes by MMSE were complex and were affected by interactions with age and APOE status. Non-linearity was found in several baseline effects models. Non-constant within-subject rates of biomarker change were found in only one model, likely due to limited within-subject longitudinal follow up. Creating reliable models that describe the full trajectories of AD biomarkers will require significant additional longitudinal data in individual participants.

Objective

A workgroup commissioned by the Alzheimer’s Association (AA) and the National Institute on Aging (NIA) recently published research criteria for preclinical Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We performed a preliminary assessment of these guidelines.

Methods

We employed Pittsburgh compound B positron emission tomography (PET) imaging as our biomarker of cerebral amyloidosis and 18fluorodeoxyglucose PET imaging and hippocampal volume as biomarkers of neurodegeneration. A group of 42 clinically diagnosed AD subjects was used to create imaging biomarker cut-points. A group of 450 cognitively normal (CN) subjects from a population based sample was used to develop cognitive cut-points and to assess population frequencies of the different preclinical AD stages using different cut-point criteria.

Results

The new criteria subdivide the preclinical phase of AD into stages 1–3. To classify our CN subjects, two additional categories were needed. Stage 0 denotes subjects with normal AD biomarkers and no evidence of subtle cognitive impairment. Suspected Non-AD Pathophysiology (SNAP) denotes subjects with normal amyloid PET imaging, but abnormal neurodegeneration biomarker studies. At fixed cut-points corresponding to 90% sensitivity for diagnosing AD and the 10th percentile of CN cognitive scores, 43% of our sample was classified as stage 0; 16% stage 1; 12 % stage 2; 3% stage 3; and 23% SNAP.

Interpretation

This cross-sectional evaluation of the NIA-AA criteria for preclinical AD indicates that the 1–3 staging criteria coupled with stage 0 and SNAP categories classify 97% of CN subjects from a population-based sample, leaving just 3% unclassified. Future longitudinal validation of the criteria will be important.

Background

Steroid-responsive encephalopathies can considered vasculitic or nonvasculitic. Clinicopathological studies of nonvasculitic steroid-responsive encephalopathy are unusual, but can explain the range of diagnoses consistent with a steroid responsive presentation in life.

Objective

To extend the range of clinical features and pathological findings consistent with steroid-responsive encephalopathy.

Design, Methods, and Patients

A clinicopathological case series of four patients (ages 54–71 years, 2 women) with steroid-responsive encephalopathy followed at this institution until the time of death.

Results

Clinical features were suggestive of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, dementia with Lewy Bodies, and parkinsonism, but pathological examination revealed only Alzheimer’s Disease-related findings without evidence of Lewy bodies or prion disease in all cases. All patients demonstrated marked, sustained improvement following steroid treatment, based on clinical, magnetic resonance imaging, and/or electroencephalogram studiesAlzheimer’s Disease was not diagnosed in life due to a lack of hippocampal atrophy on brain imaging and a dramatic symptomatic response to steroids.

Conclusions

Steroid-responsive encephalopathy is the clinical presentation of some patients with Alzheimer’s Disease related pathology at autopsy, and can be consistent with the clinical diagnoses of parkisonism, dementia with Lewy Bodies, or Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease in life.

Objective

Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is associated with degeneration of white matter tracts that can be detected using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). However, little is known about whether tract degeneration is associated with the clinical symptoms of PSP. The aim of this study was to use DTI to assess white matter tract degeneration in PSP and to investigate correlates, between tract integrity and clinical measures.

Design

Case-control study

Setting

Tertiary care medical centre

Patients

Twenty subjects with probable PSP and 20 age and gender-matched healthy controls. All PSP subjects underwent standardized clinical testing, including the Frontal Behavioral Inventory and Frontal Assessment Battery to assess behavioral change; the PSP Rating Scale to measure disease severity, the Movement Disorder Society-sponsored revision of the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (parts I, II and III) to measure motor function, and the PSP Saccadic Impairment Scale to measure eye movement abnormalities.

Main outcome measures

Fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity measured using both region-of-interest analysis and Track Based Spatial Statistics.

Results

Abnormal diffusivity was observed predominantly in superior cerebellar peduncles, body of the corpus callosum, inferior longitudinal fasciculus and superior longitudinal fasciculus in PSP compared to controls. Fractional anisotropy values in the superior cerebellar peduncles correlated with disease severity; inferior longitudinal fasciculus correlated with motor function, and superior longitudinal fasciculus correlated with severity of saccadic impairments.

Conclusions

These results demonstrate that PSP is associated with degeneration of brainstem, association and commissural fibers and that this degeneration likely plays an important role in clinical dysfunction.

Task-free functional magnetic resonance imaging (TF-fMRI) has great potential for advancing the understanding and treatment of neurologic illness. However, as with all measures of neural activity, variability is a hallmark of intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs) identified by TF-fMRI. This variability has hampered efforts to define a robust metric of connectivity suitable as a biomarker for neurologic illness. We hypothesized that some of this variability rather than representing noise in the measurement process, is related to a fundamental feature of connectivity within ICNs, which is their non-stationary nature. To test this hypothesis, we used a large (n = 892) population-based sample of older subjects to construct a well characterized atlas of 68 functional regions, which were categorized based on independent component analysis network of origin, anatomical locations, and a functional meta-analysis. These regions were then used to construct dynamic graphical representations of brain connectivity within a sliding time window for each subject. This allowed us to demonstrate the non-stationary nature of the brain’s modular organization and assign each region to a “meta-modular” group. Using this grouping, we then compared dwell time in strong sub-network configurations of the default mode network (DMN) between 28 subjects with Alzheimer’s dementia and 56 cognitively normal elderly subjects matched 1∶2 on age, gender, and education. We found that differences in connectivity we and others have previously observed in Alzheimer’s disease can be explained by differences in dwell time in DMN sub-network configurations, rather than steady state connectivity magnitude. DMN dwell time in specific modular configurations may also underlie the TF-fMRI findings that have been described in mild cognitive impairment and cognitively normal subjects who are at risk for Alzheimer’s dementia.

Objective

To report the clinical, electroencephalographic, and neuroradiologic findings in a kindred with a novel insertion in the prion protein gene (PRNP).

Design

Clinical description of a kindred.

Setting

Mayo Clinic Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (Rochester).

Subjects

Two pathologically-confirmed cases and their relatives.

Main outcome measures

Clinical features, electroencephalographic patterns, magnetic resonance imaging abnormalities, genetic analyses and neuropathological features.

Results

The proband presented with clinical and neuroimaging features of atypical frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and ataxia. Generalized tonic-clonic seizures developed later in her course, and electroencephalography revealed spike and wave discharges but no periodic sharp wave complexes. Her affected sister and father also exhibited FTD-like features, and both experienced generalized tonic-clonic seizures and gait ataxia late in their course. Genetic analyses in the proband identified a novel defect in PRNP with one mutated allele carrying a 288 base pair insertion (BPI) consisting of 12 octapeptide repeats. Neuropathologic examination of the sister and proband revealed PrP-positive plaques and widespread tau-positive tangles.

Conclusion

This kindred has a unique combination of clinical and neuropathologic features associated with the largest BPI identified to date in PRNP, and underscores the need to consider familial prion disease in the differential diagnosis of a familial FTD-like syndrome.

The common neurodegenerative pathologies underlying dementia are Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Lewy body disease (LBD) and Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). Our aim was to identify patterns of atrophy unique to each of these diseases using antemortem structural-MRI scans of pathologically-confirmed dementia cases and build an MRI-based differential diagnosis system. Our approach of creating atrophy maps using structural-MRI and applying them for classification of new incoming patients is labeled Differential-STAND (Differential-diagnosis based on STructural Abnormality in NeuroDegeneration). Pathologically-confirmed subjects with a single dementing pathologic diagnosis who had an MRI at the time of clinical diagnosis of dementia were identified: 48 AD, 20 LBD, 47 FTLD-TDP (pathology-confirmed FTLD with TDP-43). Gray matter density in 91 regions-of-interest was measured in each subject and adjusted for head-size and age using a database of 120 cognitively normal elderly. The atrophy patterns in each dementia type when compared to pathologically-confirmed controls mirrored known disease-specific anatomic patterns: AD-temporoparietal association cortices and medial temporal lobe; FTLD-TDP-frontal and temporal lobes and LBD-bilateral amygdalae, dorsal midbrain and inferior temporal lobes. Differential-STAND based classification of each case was done based on a mixture model generated using bisecting k-means clustering of the information from the MRI scans. Leave-one-out classification showed reasonable performance compared to the autopsy gold-standard and clinical diagnosis: AD (sensitivity:90.7%; specificity:84 %), LBD (sensitivity:78.6%; specificity:98.8%) and FTLD-TDP (sensitivity:84.4%; specificity:93.8%). The proposed approach establishes a direct a priori relationship between specific topographic patterns on MRI and “gold standard” of pathology which can then be used to predict underlying dementia pathology in new incoming patients.

Numerous kindreds with familial frontotemporal dementia and/or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis have been linked to chromosome 9, and an expansion of the GGGGCC hexanucleotide repeat in the non-coding region of chromosome 9 open reading frame 72 has recently been identified as the pathogenic mechanism. We describe the key characteristics in the probands and their affected relatives who have been evaluated at Mayo Clinic Rochester or Mayo Clinic Florida in whom the hexanucleotide repeat expansion were found. Forty-three probands and 10 of their affected relatives with DNA available (total 53 subjects) were shown to carry the hexanucleotide repeat expansion. Thirty-six (84%) of the 43 probands had a familial disorder, whereas seven (16%) appeared to be sporadic. Among examined subjects from the 43 families (n = 63), the age of onset ranged from 33 to 72 years (median 52 years) and survival ranged from 1 to 17 years, with the age of onset <40 years in six (10%) and >60 in 19 (30%). Clinical diagnoses among examined subjects included behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia with or without parkinsonism (n = 30), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (n = 18), frontotemporal dementia/amyotrophic lateral sclerosis with or without parkinsonism (n = 12), and other various syndromes (n = 3). Parkinsonism was present in 35% of examined subjects, all of whom had behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia or frontotemporal dementia/amyotrophic lateral sclerosis as the dominant clinical phenotype. No subject with a diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia was identified with this mutation. Incomplete penetrance was suggested in two kindreds, and the youngest generation had significantly earlier age of onset (>10 years) compared with the next oldest generation in 11 kindreds. Neuropsychological testing showed a profile of slowed processing speed, complex attention/executive dysfunction, and impairment in rapid word retrieval. Neuroimaging studies showed bilateral frontal abnormalities most consistently, with more variable degrees of parietal with or without temporal changes; no case had strikingly focal or asymmetric findings. Neuropathological examination of 14 patients revealed a range of transactive response DNA binding protein molecular weight 43 pathology (10 type A and four type B), as well as ubiquitin-positive cerebellar granular neuron inclusions in all but one case. Motor neuron degeneration was detected in nine patients, including five patients without ante-mortem signs of motor neuron disease. While variability exists, most cases with this mutation have a characteristic spectrum of demographic, clinical, neuropsychological, neuroimaging and especially neuropathological findings.

Objective

When using imaging to predict time to progression from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to Alzheimer's disease (AD), time-to-event statistical methods account for varying lengths of follow-up times among subjects whereas two-sample t-tests in voxel-based morphometry (VBM) do not. Our objectives were to apply a time-to-event voxel-based analytic method to identify regions on MRI where atrophy is associated with significantly increased risk of future progression to AD in subjects with MCI and to compare it to traditional voxel-level patterns obtained by applying two-sample methods. We also compared the power required to detect an association using time-to-event methods versus two-sample approaches.

Methods

Subjects with MCI at baseline were followed prospectively. The event of interest was clinical diagnosis of AD. Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for age, sex, and education were used to estimate the relative hazard of progression from MCI to AD based on rank-transformed voxel-level gray matter density (GMD) estimates.

Results

The greatest risk of progression to AD was associated with atrophy of the medial temporal lobes. Patients ranked at the 25th percentile of GMD in these regions had more than a doubling of risk of progression to AD at a given time-point compared to patients at the 75th percentile. Power calculations showed the time-to-event approach to be more efficient than the traditional two-sample approach.

Conclusions

We present a new voxel-based analytic method that incorporates time-to-event statistical methods. In the context of a progressive disease like AD, time-to-event VBM seems more appropriate and powerful than traditional two-sample methods.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the association of type 2 diabetes with subcortical infarctions.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

We investigated this association in subjects with type 2 diabetes (case subjects; n = 93) and without type 2 diabetes (control subjects; n = 186), matched by age, sex, and years of education. Participants were a subset of the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging (median age 79 years) who had undergone magnetic resonance imaging.

RESULTS

The frequency of subcortical infarctions was 39% in case subjects and 29% in control subjects (odds ratio 1.59 [95% CI 0.91–2.75]). The association was stronger in case subjects without treatment (2.60 [1.11–6.08]) and in case subjects with diabetes-related complications (1.96 [1.02–3.74]) compared with control subjects.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that untreated type 2 diabetes and type 2 diabetes with complications are associated with subcortical infarctions.

The clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer Disease (AD) does not exactly match the pathological findings at autopsy in every subject. Therefore, in-vivo imaging measures, such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) that measure anatomical variations in each brain due to atrophy, would be clinically useful independent supplementary measures of pathology. We have developed an algorithm that extracts atrophy information from individual patient’s 3D MRI scans and assigns a STructural Abnormality iNDex (STAND)-score to the scan based on the degree of atrophy in comparison to patterns extracted from a large library of clinically well characterized AD and CN (cognitively normal) subject’s MRI scans. STAND-scores can be adjusted for demographics to give adjusted-STAND (aSTAND)-scores which are typically > 0 for subjects with abnormal brains. Since histopathological findings are considered to represent the “ground truth”, our objective was to assess the sensitivity of aSTAND-scores to pathological AD staging. This was done by comparing antemortem MRI based aSTAND-scores with post mortem grading of disease severity in 101 subjects who had both antemortem MRI and postmortem Braak neurofibrillary tangle (NFT) staging. We found a rank correlation of 0.62 (p<0.0001) between Braak NFT stage and aSTAND-scores. The results show that optimally extracted information from MRI scans such as STAND-scores accurately capture disease severity and can be used as an independent approximate surrogate marker for in-vivo pathological staging as well as for early identification of AD in individual subjects.

There are little data on the relationship between Lewy body disease and mild cognitive impairment syndromes. The Mayo Clinic aging and dementia databases in Rochester, Minnesota, and Jacksonville, Florida were queried for cases who were diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment between 1 January 1996 and 30 April 2008, were prospectively followed and were subsequently found to have autopsy-proven Lewy body disease. The presence of rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder was specifically assessed. Mild cognitive impairment subtypes were determined by clinical impression and neuropsychological profiles, based on prospective operational criteria. The diagnosis of clinically probable dementia with Lewy bodies was based on the 2005 McKeith criteria. Hippocampal volumes, rate of hippocampal atrophy, and proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy were assessed on available magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy scans. Eight subjects were identified; six were male. Seven developed dementia with Lewy bodies prior to death; one died characterized as mild cognitive impairment. The number of cases and median age of onset (range) for specific features were: seven with rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder—60 years (27–91 years), eight with cognitive symptoms—69 years (62–89 years), eight with mild cognitive impairment—70.5 years (66–91 years), eight with parkinsonism symptoms—71 years (66–92 years), six with visual hallucinations—72 years (64–90 years), seven with dementia—75 years (67–92 years), six with fluctuations in cognition and/or arousal—76 years (68–92 years) and eight dead—76 years (71–94 years). Rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder preceded cognitive symptom onset in six cases by a median of 10 years (2–47 years) and mild cognitive impairment diagnosis by a median of 12 years (3–48 years). The mild cognitive impairment subtypes represented include: two with single domain non-amnestic mild cognitive impairment, three with multi-domain non-amnestic mild cognitive impairment, and three with multi-domain amnestic mild cognitive impairment. The cognitive domains most frequently affected were attention and executive functioning, and visuospatial functioning. Hippocampal volumes and the rate of hippocampal atrophy were, on average, within the normal range in the three cases who underwent magnetic resonance imaging, and the choline/creatine ratio was elevated in the two cases who underwent proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy when they were diagnosed as mild cognitive impairment. On autopsy, six had neocortical-predominant Lewy body disease and two had limbic-predominant Lewy body disease; only one had coexisting high-likelihood Alzheimer's disease. These findings indicate that among Lewy body disease cases that pass through a mild cognitive impairment stage, any cognitive pattern or mild cognitive subtype is possible, with the attention/executive and visuospatial domains most frequently impaired. Hippocampal volume and proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy data were consistent with recent data in dementia with Lewy bodies. All cases with rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder and mild cognitive impairment were eventually shown to have autopsy-proven Lewy body disease, indicating that rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder plus mild cognitive impairment probably reflects brainstem and cerebral Lewy body disease.

Background and Purpose

Decreased glucose metabolism in the temporal and parietal lobes on [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET is recognized as an early imaging marker for the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology. Our objective was to investigate the effects of age on FDG PET findings in aMCI.

Methods

25 patients with aMCI at 55–86 years of age (median = 73), and 25 age and gender matched cognitively normal (CN) subjects underwent FDG PET. SPM5 was used to compare the FDG uptake in aMCI-old (>73 years) and aMCI-young (>73 years) patients to CN subjects. The findings in the aMCI-old patients were independently validated in a separate cohort of 10 aMCI and 13 CN subjects older than 73 years of age.

Results

The pattern of decreased glucose metabolism and gray matter atrophy in the medial temporal, posterior cingulate, precuneus, lateral parietal and temporal lobes in aMCI-young subjects was consistent with the typical pattern observed in AD. The pattern of glucose metabolic changes in aMCI-old subjects was different, predominantly involving the frontal lobes and the left parietal lobe. Gray matter atrophy in aMCI-old subjects was less pronounced than the aMCI-young subjects involving the hippocampus and the basal forebrain in both hemispheres

Conclusion

Pathological heterogeneity may be underlying the absence of AD-like glucose metabolic changes in older compared to younger aMCI patients. This may be an important consideration for the clinical use of temporoparietal hypometabolism on FDG PET as a marker for early diagnosis of AD in aMCI.

This study compares diagnostic accuracy of magnetic resonance (MR)-based hippocampal volumetry, single voxel (SV) 1H MR Spectroscopy (MRS) and MR diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) measurements in discriminating patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI), Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and normally aging elderly. Sixty-one normally aging elderly, 24 MCI, and 22 AD patients underwent MR-based hippocampal volumetry, 1H MRS, and DWI. 1H MRS voxels were placed over both of the posterior cingulate gyri and N-acetyl aspartate (NAA) / creatine (Cr), myoinositol (MI) /Cr and NAA /MI ratios were obtained. Apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps were derived from DWI and hippocampal borders were traced to measure hippocampal ADC. At 80% specificity, the most sensitive single measurement to discriminate MCI (79 %) and AD (86 %) from controls was hippocampal volumes. The most sensitive single measurement to discriminate AD from MCI was posterior cingulate gyrus NAA /Cr (67 %). At high specificity (>85 –90%) combinations of MR measures had superior diagnostic sensitivity compared to any single MR measurement for the AD vs. control and control vs. MCI comparisons. The MR measures that best discriminate more from less affected individuals along the cognitive continuum from normal to AD vary with disease severity. Selection of imaging measures used for clinical assessment or monitoring efficiency of therapeutic intervention should be tailored to the clinical stage of the disease.

This study tests if measures of hippocampal water diffusivity at baseline can predict future progression to Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). Higher baseline hippocampal diffusivity was associated with a greater hazard of progression to AD in aMCI (p=0.002). MR diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) may help identify patients with aMCI who will progress to AD as well or better than structural MRI measures of hippocampal atrophy.

Objective

To determine the 1H MR spectroscopic (MRS) findings and inter-group differences among common dementias: Alzheimer's disease (AD), vascular dementia (VaD), dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD).

Methods

We consecutively recruited 206 normal elderly, 121 patients with AD, 41 with FTLD, 20 with DLB, and 8 with VaD. We evaluated the 1H MRS metabolite ratio changes in common dementias with respect to normal, and also differences among the common dementias.

Results

N-acetylaspartate/Creatine (NAA/Cr) was lower than normal in patients with AD, FTLD, and VaD. Myo-inositol (mI)/Cr was higher than normal in patients with AD and FTLD. Choline (Cho)/Cr was higher than normal in patients with, AD, FTLD, and DLB. There were no metabolite differences between patients with AD and FTLD, nor between patients with DLB and VaD. NAA /Cr was lower in patients with AD and FTLD than DLB. MI /Cr was higher in patients with AD and FTLD than VaD. MI /Cr was also higher in patients with FTLD than DLB.

Conclusions

NAA/Cr levels are decreased in dementias that are characterized by neuron loss such as AD, FTLD, and VaD. MI/Cr levels are elevated in dementias that are pathologically characterized by gliosis such as AD and FTLD. Cho/Cr levels are elevated in dementias that are characterized by a profound cholinergic deficit such as AD and DLB.

Magnetic Resonance (MR)- based volume measurements of atrophy are potential markers of disease progression in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Longitudinal changes in 1H MR spectroscopy (1H MRS) metabolite markers have not been characterized in aMCI subjects. Our objective was to determine the longitudinal 1H MRS metabolite changes in patients with aMCI, and AD, and to compare 1H MRS metabolite ratios and ventricular volumes in tracking clinical disease progression in AD. The neuronal integrity marker N-acetylaspartate/Creatine ratio declined in aMCI and AD patients compared to cognitively normal elderly. The changein 1H MRS metabolite ratios correlated with clinical progression about as strongly as the rate of ventricular expansion, suggesting that 1H MRS metabolite ratios may be useful markers for the progression of AD. Choline/Creatine ratio declined in stable aMCI, compared to converter aMCI patients and cognitively normal elderly, which may be related to a compensatory mechanism in aMCI patients who did not to progress to AD.

The aim of this study was to examine the associations of Apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype, metabolic changes in the posterior cingulate detected by 1H magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), and neuropsychologic measures of memory and cognition both in normally aging elderly, and in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD. We studied 67 controls, 18 MCI and 33 AD patients. We used the Dementia Rating Scale total score (DRSTOT) as a measure of general cognitive function and the total learning from the Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVTOT) as a measure of memory performance. No differences were noted on 1H MRS metabolite ratios or cognitive measures across APOE genotype within control and patient groups.. In controls, age was a significant predictor of both cognitive test scores, and NAA/Cr was a univariate associate of DRSTOT. All three 1H MRS metabolite ratios, N-acetylaspartate (NAA)/Creatine (Cr), myoinositol (MI)/Cr, and NAA/MI, were univariate associates of AVTOT and DRSTOT scores in the combined MCI and AD group. In stepwise regression analyses in the combined patient group only NAA/MI entered the model. These data suggest NAA/Cr could be a modest predictor of general cognitive function in both healthy elderly and impaired patients, while MI/Cr is a more specific marker for neuropsychologic dysfunction associated with neurodegenerative disease. Among 1H MRS measurements, the NAA/MI ratio maybe the most efficient predictor of memory and cognitive function in patients with MCI and AD.

Background

Although a majority of patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) progress to Alzheimer disease, the natural history of nonamnestic MCI (naMCI) is less clear. Noninvasive imaging surrogates for underlying pathological findings in MCI would be clinically useful for identifying patients who may benefit from disease-specific treatments at the prodromal stage of dementia.

Objective

To determine the characteristic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and proton MR spectroscopy (1H MRS) profiles of MCI subtypes.

Design

Case-control study.

Setting

Community-based sample at a tertiary referral center.

Patients

Ninety-one patients with single-domain aMCI, 32 patients with multiple-domain aMCI, 20 patients with single- or multiple-domain naMCI, and 100 cognitively normal elderly subjects frequency-matched by age and sex.

Main Outcome Measures

Posterior cingulate gyrus 1H MRS metabolite ratios, hippocampal volumes, and cerebrovascular disease on MRI.

Results

Patients with single-domain aMCI were characterized by small hippocampal volumes and elevated ratios of myo-inositol to creatine levels. Patients with naMCI on average had normal hippocampal volumes and 1H MRS metabolite ratios, but a greater proportion (3 of 20 patients [15%]) had cortical infarctions compared with patients with single-domain aMCI (6 of 91 [7%]). For characterization of MCI subtypes, 1H MRS and structural MRI findings were complementary.

Conclusions

The MRI and 1H MRS findings in singledomain aMCI are consistent with a pattern similar to that of Alzheimer disease. Absence of this pattern on average in patients with naMCI suggests that cerebrovascular disease and other neurodegenerative diseases may be contributing to the cognitive impairment in many individuals with naMCI.

Purpose

To determine the neuropathologic correlates of antemortem hydrogen 1 (1H) magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy metabolite measurements in subjects with Alzheimer disease (AD)-type pathology.

Materials and Methods

This study was approved by the institutional review board and was compliant with HIPAA regulations. Informed consent was obtained from each subject. The authors identified 54 subjects who underwent antemortem 1H MR spectroscopy and were clinically healthy or had AD-type pathology with low to high likelihood of AD according to National Institute on Aging–Reagan neuropathologic criteria at autopsy. They investigated the associations between 1H MR spectroscopy metabolite measurements and Braak neurofibrillary tangle stage (Braak stage), neuritic plaque score, and AD likelihood, with adjustments for subject age, subject sex, and time between 1H MR spectroscopy and death.

Results

Decreases in N-acetylaspartate–to-creatine ratio, an index of neuronal integrity, and increases in myo-inositol–to-creatine ratio were associated with higher Braak stage, higher neuritic plaque score, and greater likelihood of AD. The N-acetylaspartate–to–myo-inositol ratio proved to be the strongest predictor of the pathologic likelihood of AD. The strongest association observed was that between N-acetylaspartate–to–myo-inositol ratio and Braak stage (RN2 = 0.47, P < .001).

Conclusion

Antemortem 1H MR spectroscopy metabolite changes correlated with AD-type pathology seen at autopsy. The study findings validated 1H MR spectroscopy metabolite measurements against the neuropathologic criteria for AD, and when combined with prior longitudinal 1H MR spectroscopy findings, indicate that these measurements could be used as biomarkers for disease progression in clinical trials.

Objective

To investigate patterns of cerebral atrophy associated with specific subtypes of mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

Design

Case-control study

Setting

Community-based sample at a tertiary referral center

Patients

One hundred and forty-five subjects with MCI subjects and 145 age and gender-matched cognitively normal controls. MCI subjects were classified as amnestic single cognitive domain, amnestic multi-domain, non-amnestic single-domain and non-amnestic multi-domain MCI. The non-amnestic single-domain subjects were also divided into language, attention/executive, and visuospatial groups based on the specific cognitive impairment.

Main Outcome Measure

Patterns of grey matter loss in the MCI groups compared to controls assessed using voxel-based morphometry

Results

The amnestic single and multi-domain groups both showed loss in the medial and inferior temporal lobes compared to controls, while the multi-domain group also showed involvement of the posterior temporal lobe, parietal association cortex and posterior cingulate. The non-amnestic single-domain subjects with language impairment showed loss in the left anterior inferior temporal lobe. The group with attention/executive deficits showed loss in the basal forebrain and hypothalamus. No coherent patterns of loss were observed in the other subgroups.

Conclusions

The pattern of atrophy in the amnestic groups is consistent with the concept that MCI in most of these subjects represents prodromal AD. However, the different patterns in the language and attention/executive groups suggest that these subjects may have a different underlying disorder.

The aim of this study was to compare patterns of cerebral atrophy on MRI, and neurochemistry on magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), in subjects with posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) and typical Alzheimer's disease (AD). Voxel-based morphometry was used to assess grey matter atrophy in 38 subjects with PCA, 38 subjects with typical AD, and 38 controls. Clinical data was assessed in all PCA subjects. Single-voxel 1H MRS located in the posterior cingulate was analyzed in a subset of subjects with PCA, typical AD, and control subjects. PCA showed a pattern of atrophy affecting occipital, parietal and posterior temporal lobes, compared to controls. The pattern was bilateral, but more severe on the right. Subjects with PCA showed greater atrophy in the right visual association cortex than subjects with typical AD, whereas those with AD showed greater atrophy in the left hippocampus than those with PCA. 1H MRS suggested loss of neuronal integrity and glial activation in subjects with PCA and AD. The differing patterns of atrophy on MRI suggest that PCA should be considered a distinct entity from typical AD.

OBJECTIVE

To develop and validate a tool for Alzheimer's disease (AD) diagnosis in individual subjects using support vector machine (SVM) based classification of structural MR (sMR) images.

BACKGROUND

Libraries of sMR scans of clinically well characterized subjects can be harnessed for the purpose of diagnosing new incoming subjects.

METHODS

190 patients with probable AD were age- and gender-matched with 190 cognitively normal (CN) subjects. Three different classification models were implemented: Model I uses tissue densities obtained from sMR scans to give STructural Abnormality iNDex (STAND)-score; and Models II and III use tissue densities as well as covariates (demographics and Apolipoprotein E genotype) to give adjusted-STAND (aSTAND)-score. Data from 140 AD and 140 CN were used for training. The SVM parameter optimization and training was done by four-fold cross validation. The remaining independent sample of 50 AD and 50 CN were used to obtain a minimally biased estimate of the generalization error of the algorithm.

RESULTS

The CV accuracy of Model II and Model III aSTAND-scores was 88.5% and 89.3% respectively and the developed models generalized well on the independent test datasets. Anatomic patterns best differentiating the groups were consistent with the known distribution of neurofibrillary AD pathology.

CONCLUSIONS

This paper presents preliminary evidence that application of SVM-based classification of an individual sMR scan relative to a library of scans can provide useful information in individual subjects for diagnosis of AD. Including demographic and genetic information in the classification algorithm slightly improves diagnostic accuracy.

Biomarkers are likely to be important in the study of Alzheimer disease (AD) for a variety of reasons. A clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer disease is inaccurate even among experienced investigators in about 10% to 15% of cases, and biomarkers might improve the accuracy of diagnosis. Importantly for the development of putative disease-modifying drugs for Alzheimer disease, biomarkers might also serve as indirect measures of disease severity. When used in this way, sample sizes of clinical trials might be reduced, and a change in biomarker could be considered supporting evidence of disease modification. This review summarizes a meeting of the Alzheimer’s Association’s Research Roundtable, during which existing and emerging biomarkers for AD were evaluated. Imaging biomarkers including volumetric magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography assessing either glucose utilization or ligands binding to amyloid plaque are discussed. Additionally, biochemical biomarkers in blood or cerebrospinal fluid are assessed. Currently appropriate uses of biomarkers in the study of Alzheimer disease, and areas where additional work is needed, are discussed.