An unbiased, staged, multicentre, validation strategy for Alzheimer's disease CSF tau levels

Abstract

Newly proposed diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer's disease include cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) tau levels as one core supportive criterion. The published high sensitivity and specificity figures for CSF tau levels in Alzheimer's disease are offset by the large range of proposed cutoff values (9.6 pg/mL to 1140 pg/mL). This study aimed to provide guidance on how to establish, validate and audit CSF tau cutoff values using an unbiased, two-stage multicentre strategy. Both receiver operator characteristics (ROC) optimised and population-based cutoff values were calculated on a pilot dataset ( n = 99), validated in a large dataset ( n = 560) and then compared to the literature. The data suggest using an ROC optimised cutoff level of 323 ± 51.7 pg/mL allowing for the published inter-laboratory coefficient of variation of 16%. This cutoff level was confirmed in a prospective audit ( n = 100). As demand for CSF tau levels will increase globally, the accuracy of local CSF hTau cutoff levels can be compared against this benchmark.