MurphyLab

🩸 🧠 ⏱️ What if a blood test could predict WHEN an individual would develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease? High plasma p-tau217 predicts greater risk for Alzheimer’s symptoms—do the plasma p-tau217 levels provide insights into WHEN symptoms might begin? We found that after a certain level, plasma p-tau217 increased consistently across individuals and allowed creation of “clock” models that could be used to estimate age at p-tau217 abnormality (nature.com/articles/s4159…). The age at p-tau217 abnormality was strongly associated with the age that Alzheimer’s symptoms began. Interestingly, older individuals developed symptoms more quickly after p-tau217 abnormality. These models are not yet accurate enough to be useful to individuals, but we expect they can be improved by adding additional blood biomarkers and clinical features. We have created an application to view the results (amyloid.shinyapps.io/plasma_ptau217…) and shared all our code to accelerate progress. The eventual goal is to help individuals to understand their likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s symptoms. @KellenPetersen @FNIH_Org @WashUNeurology @alzassociation #ENDALZ

Inflammatory reprogramming of human brain endothelial cells compromises blood–brain barrier integrity in Alzheimer’s disease biorxiv.org/content/10.110…