Elevated Plasma Phosphorylated Tau 181 in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Objective: Plasma phosphorylated tau (p-tau ) is reliably elevated in Alzheimer's disease (AD), but less explored is its specificity relative to other neurodegenerative conditions. Here, we find novel evidence that plasma p-tau is elevated in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative condition typically lacking tau pathology. We performed a detailed evaluation to identify the clinical correlates of elevated p-tau in ALS.

Methods: Patients were clinically or pathologically diagnosed with ALS (n = 130) or AD (n = 79), or were healthy non-impaired controls (n = 26). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were analyzed and area under the curve (AUC) was used to discriminate AD from ALS. Within ALS, Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon tests compared analytes by presence/absence of upper motor neuron and lower motor neuron (LMN) signs. Spearman correlations tested associations between plasma p-tau and postmortem neuron loss.

Results: A Wilcoxon test showed plasma p-tau was higher in ALS than controls (W = 2,600, p = 0.000015), and ROC analyses showed plasma p-tau poorly discriminated AD and ALS (AUC = 0.60). In ALS, elevated plasma p-tau was associated with LMN signs in cervical (W = 827, p = 0.0072), thoracic (W = 469, p = 0.00025), and lumbosacral regions (W = 851, p = 0.0000029). In support of LMN findings, plasma p-tau was associated with neuron loss in the spinal cord (rho = 0.46, p = 0.017), but not in the motor cortex (p = 0.41). Cerebrospinal spinal fluid p-tau and plasma neurofilament light chain were included as reference analytes, and demonstrate specificity of findings.

Interpretation: We found strong evidence that plasma p-tau is elevated in ALS and may be a novel marker specific to LMN dysfunction. ANN NEUROL 2022;92:807-818.