Characterizing brain tau and cognitive decline along the amyloid timeline in Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract Recent longitudinal PET imaging studies have established methods to estimate the age at which amyloid becomes abnormal at the level of the individual. Here we recontextualized amyloid levels into the temporal domain to better understand the downstream Alzheimer’s disease processes of tau neurofibrillary tangle (NFT) accumulation and cognitive decline. This cohort study included a total of 601 individuals from the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention and Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center that underwent amyloid and tau PET, longitudinal neuropsychological assessments and met clinical criteria for three clinical diagnosis groups: cognitively unimpaired (n = 537); mild cognitive impairment (n = 48); or dementia (n = 16). Cortical 11C-Pittsburgh compound B (PiB) distribution volume ratio (DVR) and sampled iterative local approximation were used to estimate amyloid positive (A+; global PiB DVR > 1.16 equivalent to 17.1 centiloids) onset age and years of A+ duration at tau PET (i.e. amyloid chronicity). Tau PET burden was quantified using 18F-MK-6240 standardized uptake value ratios (70–90 min, inferior cerebellar grey matter reference region). Whole-brain and region-specific approaches were used to examine tau PET binding along the amyloid timeline and across the Alzheimer’s disease clinical continuum. Voxel-wise 18F-MK-6240 analyses revealed that with each decade of A+, the spatial extent of measurable tau spread (i.e. progressed) from regions associated with early to late NFT tau stages. Regional analyses indicated that tau burden in the entorhinal cortex was detectable, on average, within 10 years of A+ onset. Additionally, the entorhinal cortex was the region most sensitive to early amyloid pathology and clinical impairment in this predominantly preclinical sample. Among initially cognitively unimpaired (n = 472) individuals with longitudinal cognitive follow-up, mixed effects models showed significant linear and non-linear interactions of A+ duration and entorhinal tau on cognitive decline, suggesting a synergistic effect whereby greater A+ duration, together with a higher entorhinal tau burden, increases the likelihood of cognitive decline beyond their separable effects. Overall, the amyloid time framework enabled a spatiotemporal characterization of tau deposition patterns across the Alzheimer’s disease continuum. This approach, which examined cross-sectional tau PET data along the amyloid timeline to make longitudinal disease course inferences, demonstrated that A+ duration explains a considerable amount of variability in the magnitude and topography of tau spread, which largely recapitulated NFT staging observed in human neuropathological studies. By anchoring disease progression to the onset of amyloid, this study provides a temporal disease context, which may help inform disease prognosis and timing windows for anti-amyloid therapies.