Plasma Neurofilament Light for Prediction of Disease Progression in Familial Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration.

Neurology

From the University of California, San Francisco (J.C.R., P.W., A.M.S., Y.C., A.W., S.-Y.M.G., P.A.L., H.W.H., J.C.F., J.B.T., A.M.K., L.L.M., J.K., J.H.K., B.L.M., H.J.S., A.L.B.); UK Dementia Research Centre (C.H., D.M.C., R.S.C., M.B., M.F., C.V.G., G.P., L.R., I.S., E.T., J.D.R.), UCL Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London; Quanterix Corp (E.V., L.S., A.J., D.H.), Lexington; Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research Inc (L.Y., A. Khinikar, R.S.), Cambridge, MA; Novartis Pharma AG (A. Kieloch, M.-A.V.), Basel, Switzerland; Bluefield Project to Cure Frontotemporal Dementia (L.L.M., R.P.), San Francisco, CA; Mayo Clinic (K.K., D.S.K., B.F.B.), Rochester, MN; Mayo Clinic (N.G.-R., L.P., R.R.), Jacksonville, FL; University of Pennsylvania (D.J.I., M.G.), Philadelphia; University of California, Los Angeles (E.M.R., G.C., M.F.M., Y.B.); Harvard University/Massachusetts General Hospital (B.D.C.), Boston, MA; Washington University (N.G.), St. Louis, MO; Columbia University (E.D.H.), New York, NY; University of British Columbia (I.R.M., G.-Y.R.H.), Vancouver, Canada; Case Western Reserve University (B.S.A.), Cleveland, OH; University of Washington (K.D.-R.), Seattle; Laboratory of Neuroimaging (A.W.T.), University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Northwestern University (S.W.), Chicago, IL; University of North Carolina (D.I.K.), Chapel Hill; Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas (D.K.); University of California, San Diego (I.L.); Johns Hopkins Hospital (C.U.O., A.P.), Baltimore, MD; University of Alabama at Birmingham (E.D.R.); University of Toronto (M.C.T., M.M.), Ontario, Canada; Indiana University School of Medicine (T.F.), Indianapolis; Biogen Inc (W.C., J.C., D.L.G.), Cambridge, MA; Erasmus Medical Centre (J.C.v.S.), Rotterdam, the Netherlands; University of Brescia (B.B.), Italy; University of Barcelona (R.S.-V.); Donostia University Hospital (F.M.), San Sebastian, Gipuzkoa, Spain; Clinique Interdisciplinaire de Mémoire (R.L.), Département des Sciences Neurologiques, CHU de Québec; Faculté de Médecine (R.L.), Université Laval, Quebec, Canada; Center for Alzheimer Research (C.G.), Division of Neurogeriatrics, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Bioclinicum, Karolinska Institutet; Unit for Hereditary Dementias (C.G.), Theme Aging, Karolinska University Hospital, Solna, Sweden; University of Tübingen (M.S.); Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) (M.S.), Tübingen, Germany; Fondazione IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico (D.G.); University of Milan (D.G.), Centro Dino Ferrari, Italy; Department of Clinical Neurosciences and Cambridge University Hospital (J.B.R.), University of Cambridge, UK; University of Western Ontario (E.F.), London, Canada; KU Leuven (R.V.), Belgium; Neurology Service (R.V.), University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium; University of Lisbon (A.d.M.), Portugal; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Neurologico Carlo Besta (F.T.), Milan, Italy; University of Coimbra (I.S.), Portugal; McGill University (S.D.), Montreal, Québec, Canada; University of Oxford (C.R.B.); Wolfson Molecular Imaging Centre (A.G.), University of Manchester, UK; University of Duisburg-Essen (A.G.), Duisberg; Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (J.L., A.D.); German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (J.L.), Munich Cluster for Systems Neurology (SyNergy); University of Ulm (M.O.), Germany; and Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Drug Research and Child Health (S.S.), University of Florence, and IRCCS Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi, Florence, Italy.

Published: May 2021

Objective: We tested the hypothesis that plasma neurofilament light chain (NfL) identifies asymptomatic carriers of familial frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD)-causing mutations at risk of disease progression.

Methods: Baseline plasma NfL concentrations were measured with single-molecule array in original (n = 277) and validation (n = 297) cohorts. , , and mutation carriers and noncarriers from the same families were classified by disease severity (asymptomatic, prodromal, and full phenotype) using the CDR Dementia Staging Instrument plus behavior and language domains from the National Alzheimer's Disease Coordinating Center FTLD module (CDR+NACC-FTLD). Linear mixed-effect models related NfL to clinical variables.

Results: In both cohorts, baseline NfL was higher in asymptomatic mutation carriers who showed phenoconversion or disease progression compared to nonprogressors (original: 11.4 ± 7 pg/mL vs 6.7 ± 5 pg/mL, = 0.002; validation: 14.1 ± 12 pg/mL vs 8.7 ± 6 pg/mL, = 0.035). Plasma NfL discriminated symptomatic from asymptomatic mutation carriers or those with prodromal disease (original cutoff: 13.6 pg/mL, 87.5% sensitivity, 82.7% specificity; validation cutoff: 19.8 pg/mL, 87.4% sensitivity, 84.3% specificity). Higher baseline NfL correlated with worse longitudinal CDR+NACC-FTLD sum of boxes scores, neuropsychological function, and atrophy, regardless of genotype or disease severity, including asymptomatic mutation carriers.

Conclusions: Plasma NfL identifies asymptomatic carriers of FTLD-causing mutations at short-term risk of disease progression and is a potential tool to select participants for prevention clinical trials.

Trial Registration Information: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02372773 and NCT02365922.

Classification Of Evidence: This study provides Class I evidence that in carriers of FTLD-causing mutations, elevation of plasma NfL predicts short-term risk of clinical progression.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8166434	PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000011848	DOI Listing

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