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Published in: Alzheimer's Research & Therapy 1/2020

01-12-2020 | Alzheimer's Disease | Research

Comparison of amyloid PET measured in Centiloid units with neuropathological findings in Alzheimer’s disease

Authors: Sanka Amadoru, Vincent Doré, Catriona A. McLean, Fairlie Hinton, Claire E. Shepherd, Glenda M. Halliday, Cristian E. Leyton, Paul A. Yates, John R. Hodges, Colin L. Masters, Victor L. Villemagne, Christopher C. Rowe

Published in: Alzheimer's Research & Therapy | Issue 1/2020

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Abstract

Background

The Centiloid scale was developed to standardise the results of beta-amyloid (Aβ) PET. We aimed to determine the Centiloid unit (CL) thresholds for CERAD sparse and moderate-density neuritic plaques, Alzheimer’s disease neuropathologic change (ADNC) score of intermediate or high probability of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), final clinicopathological diagnosis of AD, and expert visual read of a positive Aβ PET scan.

Methods

Aβ PET results in CL for 49 subjects were compared with post-mortem findings, visual read, and final clinicopathological diagnosis. The Youden Index was used to determine the optimal CL thresholds from receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves.

Results

A threshold of 20.1 CL (21.3 CL when corrected for time to death, AUC 0.97) yielded highest accuracy in detecting moderate or frequent plaque density while < 10 CL was optimal for excluding neuritic plaque. The threshold for ADNC intermediate or high likelihood AD was 49.4 CL (AUC 0.98). Those cases with a final clinicopathological diagnosis of AD yielded a median CL result of 87.7 (IQR ± 42.2) with 94% > 45 CL. Positive visual read agreed highly with results > 26 CL.

Conclusions

Centiloid values < 10 accurately reflected the absence of any neuritic plaque and > 20 CL indicated the presence of at least moderate plaque density, but approximately 50 CL or more best confirmed both neuropathological and clinicopathological diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
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Metadata
Title
Comparison of amyloid PET measured in Centiloid units with neuropathological findings in Alzheimer’s disease
Authors
Sanka Amadoru
Vincent Doré
Catriona A. McLean
Fairlie Hinton
Claire E. Shepherd
Glenda M. Halliday
Cristian E. Leyton
Paul A. Yates
John R. Hodges
Colin L. Masters
Victor L. Villemagne
Christopher C. Rowe
Publication date
01-12-2020
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
Alzheimer's Research & Therapy / Issue 1/2020
Electronic ISSN: 1758-9193
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13195-020-00587-5

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