Publications by authors named "Elizabeth Mormino"

Co-pathology is frequent in Lewy body disease, which includes clinical diagnoses of both Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. Measuring concomitant pathology can improve clinical and research diagnoses and prediction of cognitive trajectories. Tau PET imaging may serve a dual role in Lewy body disease by measuring cortical tau aggregation as well as assessing dopaminergic loss attributed to binding to neuromelanin within substantia nigra.

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Introduction: The availability of amyloid beta (Aβ) targeting therapies for Alzheimer's disease (AD) is increasing the demand for scalable biomarkers that are sensitive to early cerebral Aβ accumulation.

Methods: We evaluated fully-automated Lumipulse plasma Aβ/Aβ immunoassays for detecting cerebral Aβ in 457 clinically unimpaired (CU) and clinically impaired (CI) Stanford Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (Stanford ADRC) participants and 186 CU in the Stanford Aging and Memory Study (SAMS). Longitudinal change in ADRC plasma Aβ/Aβ and cognition and cross-sectional associations with SAMS memory and tau positron emission tomography (PET) were examined.

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Human aging affects the ability to remember new experiences, in part, because of altered neural function during memory formation. One potential contributor to age-related memory decline is diminished neural selectivity -- i.e.

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Introduction: The effects of sex and apolipoprotein E (APOE)-Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk factors-on white matter microstructure are not well characterized.

Methods: Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging data from nine well-established longitudinal cohorts of aging were free water (FW)-corrected and harmonized. This dataset included 4741 participants (age = 73.

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The presence of multiple pathologies is the largest predictor of dementia. A major gap in the field is the in vivo detection of mixed pathologies and their antecedents. The Alzheimer's Disease Research Centers (ADRCs) are uniquely positioned to address this gap.

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Article Synopsis
  • Olfactory dysfunction may signal early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD), prompting research into the piriform cortex using tau PET-MR imaging.
  • A study of 94 older adults revealed increased tau uptake in the piriform cortex correlating with disease severity, particularly in those with Alzheimer’s compared to amyloid-negative controls.
  • The results indicate heightened tau levels in AD and mild cognitive impairment, connecting greater piriform uptake with poorer memory performance, while no significant changes were observed in cognitively unimpaired Parkinson's disease.
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Parkinson's disease (PD) is a complex multisystem disorder clinically characterized by motor, non-motor, and premotor manifestations. Pathologically, PD involves neuronal loss in the substantia nigra, striatal dopamine deficiency, and accumulation of intracellular inclusions containing aggregates of α-synuclein. Recent studies demonstrate that PD is associated with dysregulated metabolic flux through the kynurenine pathway (KP), in which tryptophan is converted to kynurenine (KYN), and KYN is subsequently metabolized to neuroactive compounds quinolinic acid (QA) and kynurenic acid (KA).

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the genetic factors contributing to Alzheimer's disease by analyzing tau deposition through a genome-wide association study involving 3,046 participants.
  • It identifies the CYP1B1-RMDN2 locus as significantly linked to tau levels, with the variant rs2113389 explaining 4.3% of tau variation, while also correlating with cognitive decline.
  • Findings suggest a connection between CYP1B1 expression and tau deposition, offering potential new avenues for Alzheimer's treatment and understanding its genetic basis.
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Amplified MRI (aMRI) is a promising new technique that can visualize pulsatile brain tissue motion by amplifying sub-voxel motion in cine MRI data, but it lacks the ability to quantify the sub-voxel motion field in physical units. Here, we introduce a novel post-processing algorithm called 3D quantitative amplified MRI (3D q-aMRI). This algorithm enables the visualization and quantification of pulsatile brain motion.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigated the relationship between glucose metabolism and the development of tau pathology, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, in middle-aged adults without dementia.
  • Researchers analyzed data from 288 participants, examining their fasting plasma glucose and insulin levels and later PET scans for amyloid-β and tau loads.
  • Results showed that elevated plasma glucose correlated with increased tau load after 14 years, particularly in individuals who were not carriers of the APOE ε4 allele, while insulin levels and HOMA-IR did not show significant associations with either amyloid-β or tau.
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Background: While the amygdala receives early tau deposition in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and is involved in social and emotional processing, the relationship between amygdalar tau and early neuropsychiatric symptoms in AD is unknown. We sought to determine whether focal tau binding in the amygdala and abnormal amygdalar connectivity were detectable in a preclinical AD cohort and identify relationships between these and self-reported mood symptoms.

Methods: We examined 598 individuals (347 amyloid positive [58% female], 251 amyloid negative [62% female] subset in tau positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging cohorts) from the A4 (Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic AD) Study.

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Introduction: Amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) acquisition timing impacts quantification.

Methods: In florbetaben (FBB) PET scans of 245 adults with and without cognitive impairment, we investigated the impact of post-injection acquisition time on Centiloids (CLs) across five reference regions. CL equations for FBB were derived using standard methods, using FBB data collected between 90 and 110 min with paired Pittsburgh compound B data.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study investigates cognitive resilience (CR) to Alzheimer's disease (AD) in cognitively healthy older adults by analyzing imaging biomarkers and cognitive data over time using latent class mixture modeling.
  • The research involved 200 participants from the Harvard Aging Brain Study, who were categorized into three subgroups based on their cognitive trajectories: Normal, Resilient, and Declining, with the Resilient group showing higher cognitive performance and stability.
  • The findings suggest that leveraging imaging and cognitive assessments can effectively identify different levels of CR in preclinical AD stages, which could have implications for future research and interventions.
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Introduction: The effects of sex, race, and Apolipoprotein E () - Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk factors - on white matter integrity are not well characterized.

Methods: Diffusion MRI data from nine well-established longitudinal cohorts of aging were free-water (FW)-corrected and harmonized. This dataset included 4,702 participants (age=73.

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Background: While the amygdala receives early tau deposition in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and is involved in social and emotional processing, the relationship between amygdalar tau and early neuropsychiatric symptoms in AD is unknown. We sought to determine whether focal tau binding in the amygdala and abnormal amygdalar connectivity were detectable in a preclinical AD cohort and identify relationships between these and self-reported mood symptoms.

Methods: We examined n=598 individuals (n=347 amyloid-positive (58% female), n=251 amyloid-negative (62% female); subset into tau PET and fMRI cohorts) from the A4 Study.

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Objective: To determine whether plasma phosphorylated-Tau181 (pTau181) could be used as a diagnostic biomarker of concurrent Alzheimer's disease neuropathologic change (ADNC) or amyloidosis alone, as well as a prognostic, monitoring, and susceptibility/risk biomarker for clinical outcomes in Lewy body disease (LBD).

Methods: We studied 565 participants: 94 LBD with normal cognition, 83 LBD with abnormal cognition, 114 with Alzheimer's disease, and 274 cognitively normal. Plasma pTau181 levels were measured with the Lumipulse G platform.

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Importance: Studies have suggested that maternal history of late-onset Alzheimer disease, but not paternal, predisposes individuals to higher brain β-amyloid (Aβ) burden, reduced brain metabolism, and lower gray matter volumes.

Objective: To characterize maternal vs paternal history of memory impairment in terms of brain Aβ-positron emission tomography (Aβ-PET) and baseline cognition among a large sample of cognitively unimpaired older adults.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cross-sectional study leveraged data from 4413 individuals who were screened for the Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer (A4) study, a randomized clinical trial conducted across 67 sites in the US, Australia, Canada, and Japan aimed at Alzheimer disease prevention.

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Background And Objectives: Executive functioning is one of the first domains to be impaired in Parkinson disease (PD), and the majority of patients with PD eventually develop dementia. Thus, developing a cognitive endpoint measure specifically assessing executive functioning is critical for PD clinical trials. The objective of this study was to develop a cognitive composite measure that is sensitive to decline in executive functioning for use in PD clinical trials.

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Understanding the psychiatric symptoms of Alzheimer s disease (AD) is crucial for advancing precision medicine and therapeutic strategies. The relationship between AD behavioral symptoms and asymmetry in spatial tau PET patterns is not well-known. Braak tau progression implicates the temporal lobes early.

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Parkinson's disease (PD) starts at the molecular and cellular level long before motor symptoms appear, yet there are no early-stage molecular biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis prediction, or monitoring therapeutic response. This lack of biomarkers greatly impedes patient care and translational research-L-DOPA remains the standard of care more than 50 years after its introduction. Here, we performed a large-scale, multi-tissue, and multi-platform proteomics study to identify new biomarkers for early diagnosis and disease monitoring in PD.

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Background: Sleep-wake regulating circuits are affected during prodromal stages in the pathological progression of both Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD), and this disturbance can be measured passively using wearable devices. Our objective was to determine whether accelerometer-based measures of 24-h activity are associated with subsequent development of AD, PD, and cognitive decline.

Methods: This study obtained UK Biobank data from 82,829 individuals with wrist-worn accelerometer data aged 40 to 79 years with a mean (± SD) follow-up of 6.

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Introduction: Early cognitive decline may manifest in subtle differences in speech.

Methods: We examined 238 cognitively unimpaired adults from the Framingham Heart Study (32-75 years) who completed amyloid and tau PET imaging. Speech patterns during delayed recall of a story memory task were quantified via five speech markers, and their associations with global amyloid status and regional tau signal were examined.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study uses advanced protein analysis to identify protein communities linked to Alzheimer's disease risk in older adults who show no clinical symptoms.
  • - Researchers built a network from 3,869 proteins found in cerebrospinal fluid and validated their findings with another group, connecting these protein modules to important clinical outcomes.
  • - Key findings show that certain proteins modified by phosphorylation and ubiquitination are related to abnormal amyloid levels and executive function performance, indicating early signs of cognitive decline.
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Cerebral blood flow (CBF) may be estimated from early-frame PET imaging of lipophilic tracers, such as amyloid agents, enabling measurement of this important biomarker in participants with dementia and memory decline. Although previous methods could map relative CBF, quantitative measurement in absolute units (mL/100 g/min) remained challenging and has not been evaluated against the gold standard method of [O]water PET. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a minimally invasive quantitative CBF imaging method combining early [F]florbetaben (eFBB) with phase-contrast MRI using simultaneous PET/MRI.

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