Implementing plasma p-tau217 and cognitive testing for Alzheimer's screening in low-education populations in central China - PubMed
2 days ago
- #Alzheimer's disease
- #biomarkers
- #cognitive screening
- Evaluated a pragmatic screening strategy combining brief cognitive assessment with plasma p-tau217 in an elderly health screening cohort.
- Used Memory and Executive Screening (MES) test and plasma biomarker assessment to identify cognitive impairment.
- Cognitive impairment was defined using individualized residual norms from an internal reference sample.
- p-tau217 thresholds were PPV-oriented and anchored to age- and cognitive status-specific prior probabilities of Aβ pathology.
- MES-defined cognitive impairment (≥-2 SD deviation) was identified in 12.4% of participants.
- In cognitively unimpaired individuals, age-specific thresholds targeting a PPV of 0.7 yielded an overall p-tau217 positivity rate of 11.8%.
- Among cognitively impaired participants, 26.6% were p-tau217 positive.
- Regression-based residual method reduced education bias.
- Fully automated chemiluminescent assay enabled practical, large-scale biomarker implementation.
- Brief screening strategy supports early detection, clinical trial recruitment, and resource allocation in under-resourced regions.