Evaluation of Cerebrospinal Fluid Neurofilament Light Chain as a Routine Biomarker in a Memory Clinic

NIIKADO, MATÍAS; CHREM-MÉNDEZ, PATRICIO; ITZCOVICH, TATIANA; BARBIERI-KENNEDY, MICAELA; CALANDRI, ISMAEL; MARTINETTO, HORACIO; SERRA, MERCEDES; CALVAR, JORGE; CAMPOS, JORGE; RUSSO, MARÍA JULIETA; PERTIERRA, LUCÍA; ALLEGRI, RICARDO; SEVLEVER, GUSTAVO; SURACE, EZEQUIEL I

JOURNALS OF GERONTOLOGY SERIES A-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICAL SCIENCES

GERONTOLOGICAL SOC AMER

Año: 2018

1079-5006

Systematic evaluation of biomarkers in representative populations is needed to validate their clinical utility. In this work, we assessed thediagnostic performance of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) neurofilament light chain (NfL) in a neurocognitive clinical setting. A total of 51 patientswith different cognitive clinical syndromes and 11 cognitively normal individuals were evaluated in a memory clinic in Argentina. Clinicalconditions included mild cognitive impairment (MCI, n = 12), dementia of Alzheimer?s type (DAT, n = 14), behavioral variant frontotemporaldementia (bvFTD, n = 13), and primary progressive aphasia (logopenic [n = 6], semantic [n = 2], and nonfluent [n = 4]). We quantified CSFNfL and core Alzheimer?s disease biomarkers using commercially available ELISA kits. Cortical thickness was analyzed on brain magneticresonance imaging scans from 10 controls and 10 patients. CSF NfL was significantly increased in MCI, FTD, and DAT patients compared withcontrols (Kruskal?Wallis, p < .0001). Interestingly, receiver operating characteristic curve analysis showed the highest area under the curve(AUC) value when analyzing control versus bvFTD patients (AUC = 0.9441). Also, we observed a marginally significant correlation betweenNfL levels and left orbitofrontal cortex thickness in a small group of patients with FTD. Overall, our results further support CSF NfL as apromising biomarker in the diagnostic workup of bvFTD.