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Tau deposition patterns are associated with functional connectivity in primary tauopathies

  • Nicolai Franzmeier*
  • , Matthias Brendel
  • , Leonie Beyer
  • , Luna Slemann
  • , Gabor G. Kovacs
  • , Thomas Arzberger
  • , Carolin Kurz
  • , Gesine Respondek
  • , Milica J. Lukic
  • , Davina Biel
  • , Anna Rubinski
  • , Lukas Frontzkowski
  • , Selina Hummel
  • , Andre Müller
  • , Anika Finze
  • , Carla Palleis
  • , Emanuel Joseph
  • , Endy Weidinger
  • , Sabrina Katzdobler
  • , Mengmeng Song
  • Gloria Biechele, Maike Kern, Maximilian Scheifele, Boris Stephan Rauchmann, Robert Perneczky, Michael Rullman, Marianne Patt, Andreas Schildan, Henryk Barthel, Osama Sabri, Jost J. Rumpf, Matthias L. Schroeter, Joseph Classen, Victor Villemagne, John Seibyl, Andrew W. Stephens, Edward B. Lee, David G. Coughlin, Armin Giese, Murray Grossman, Corey T. McMillan, Ellen Gelpi, Laura Molina-Porcel, Yaroslau Compta, John C. van Swieten, Laura Donker Laat, Claire Troakes, Safa Al-Sarraj, John L. Robinson, Sharon X. Xie, David J. Irwin, Sigrun Roeber, Jochen Herms, Mikael Simons, Peter Bartenstein, Virginia M. Lee, John Q. Trojanowski, Johannes Levin, Günter Höglinger, Michael Ewers
*Corresponding author for this work
  • Klinikum der Universität München
  • Munich Cluster for Systems Neurology (SyNergy)
  • University of Pennsylvania
  • University of Toronto
  • University Health Network
  • German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases
  • Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
  • Klinikum rechts der Isar der Technischen Universität München
  • Hannover Medical School
  • University of Belgrade
  • Life Molecular Imaging GmbH
  • Imperial College London
  • University Hospital Leipzig
  • University Hospital Cologne
  • University of Melbourne
  • University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
  • InviCRO, LLC
  • inviCRO
  • University of California at San Diego
  • University of Barcelona
  • Medical University of Vienna
  • Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • King's College London

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

102 Citations (Scopus)
72 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Tau pathology is the main driver of neuronal dysfunction in 4-repeat tauopathies, including cortico-basal degeneration and progressive supranuclear palsy. Tau is assumed to spread prion-like across connected neurons, but the mechanisms of tau propagation are largely elusive in 4-repeat tauopathies, characterized not only by neuronal but also by astroglial and oligodendroglial tau accumulation. Here, we assess whether connectivity is associated with 4R-tau deposition patterns by combining resting-state fMRI connectomics with both 2nd generation 18F-PI-2620 tau-PET in 46 patients with clinically diagnosed 4-repeat tauopathies and post-mortem cell-type-specific regional tau assessments from two independent progressive supranuclear palsy patient samples (n = 97 and n = 96). We find that inter-regional connectivity is associated with higher inter-regional correlation of both tau-PET and post-mortem tau levels in 4-repeat tauopathies. In regional cell-type specific post-mortem tau assessments, this association is stronger for neuronal than for astroglial or oligodendroglial tau, suggesting that connectivity is primarily associated with neuronal tau accumulation. Using tau-PET we find further that patient-level tau patterns are associated with the connectivity of subcortical tau epicenters. Together, the current study provides combined in vivo tau-PET and histopathological evidence that brain connectivity is associated with tau deposition patterns in 4-repeat tauopathies.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1362
JournalNature Communications
Volume13
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Mar 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We acknowledge all members of the German Imaging Initiative for Tauopathies (GII4T) and the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (see supplementary information for a list of consortium members). We wish to thank the patients and their families, without whose support and altruism this research would not have been possible. Further, we would like to acknowledge Prof. Christian Haass (DZNE, Munich) for his consultation on study design, the European Reference Network for Rare Neurological Diseases—Project ID No 739510 and the Neurological Tissue Bank of the Biobanc-Hospital Clinic-IDIBAPS for sample and data procurement. This work was supported by the NIH (P30AG010124, P01AG066597, U19AG062418, and R01-NS109260), the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (TL1TR001880), the German Research Foundation (DFG; SCHR 774/5-1, DFG, INST 409/193-1 FUGG) the SyNergy excellence cluster (EXC 2145/ID 390857198). N.F. was supported by the Hertie foundation for clinical neurosciences. G.G.K. is supported by the Rossy Foundation and Safra Foundation. G.H. was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, HO2402/18-1 MSAomics), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, 01EK1605A HitTau), VolkswagenStiftung and Lower Saxony Ministry for Science (Niedersächsisches Vorab), Petermax-Müller Foundation (Etiology and Therapy of Synucleinopathies and Tauopathies). M.B. was supported by the Hirnliga e.V. (Manfred-Strohscheer-Stiftung) and by the Alzheimer Forschung Initiative e.V. (grant number #19063p).

Funding Information:
We acknowledge all members of the German Imaging Initiative for Tauopathies (GII4T) and the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (see supplementary information for a list of consortium members). We wish to thank the patients and their families, without whose support and altruism this research would not have been possible. Further, we would like to acknowledge Prof. Christian Haass (DZNE, Munich) for his consultation on study design, the European Reference Network for Rare Neurological Diseases—Project ID No 739510 and the Neurological Tissue Bank of the Biobanc-Hospital Clinic-IDIBAPS for sample and data procurement. This work was supported by the NIH (P30AG010124, P01AG066597, U19AG062418, and R01-NS109260), the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (TL1TR001880), the German Research Foundation (DFG; SCHR 774/5-1, DFG, INST 409/193-1 FUGG) the SyNergy excellence cluster (EXC 2145/ID 390857198). N.F. was supported by the Hertie foundation for clinical neurosciences. G.G.K. is supported by the Rossy Foundation and Safra Foundation. G.H. was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, HO2402/18-1 MSAomics), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, 01EK1605A HitTau), VolkswagenStiftung and Lower Saxony Ministry for Science (Niedersächsisches Vorab), Petermax-Müller Foundation (Etiology and Therapy of Synucleinopathies and Tauopathies). M.B. was supported by the Hirnliga e.V. (Manfred-Strohscheer-Stiftung) and by the Alzheimer Forschung Initiative e.V. (grant number #19063p).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).

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