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Plasma phosphorylated tau biomarkers map onto [^18F]FDG PET hypometabolism: a voxel-wise study in a clinical cohort with CSF-confirmed AD subgroup analysis.

Overview

Authors: Agostino Chiaravalloti1,2, Caterina Motta3, Chiara Giuseppina Bonomi3, Martina Poli3, Carmela Di Russo4, Orazio Schillaci1, Alessandro Martorana3
  1. Department of Biomedicine and Prevention, University of Rome Tor Vergata,Rome, Italy
  2. IRCCS Neuromed,Pozzilli, Italy
  3. Memory Clinic and Neurodegenerative Dementia Research Unit, Policlinico Tor Vergata, University of Rome Tor Vergata,Rome, Italy
  4. Nuclear Medicine Unit, Policlinico Tor Vergata,Rome, Italy
Journal: European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging, volume 53, issue 10, pages 5699-5708
Dates: received 26 March 2026; accepted 15 May 2026; published online 27 May 2026; in print 2026
Type: Research article · Language: English
License: CC BY
Identifiers: DOI 10.1007/s00259-026-07939-7 · PMID 42191948 · PMCID PMC13421210 · OpenAlex W7162429909
Open access: hybrid, a free copy (OpenAlex)
Status: code on request
Categories: other (modality), PET / SPECT (modality), human (organism), Alzheimer's / dementia (population)
Methods: Statistics, Connectivity, fMRI & imaging
Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, [^18F]FDG PET, Statistical Parametric Mapping, Plasma biomarkers, Phosphorylated tau, p-tau181, p-tau181/Aβ42, p-tau217, Cerebellar normalisation, Voxel-wise analysis
MeSH: Alzheimer Disease*, Fluorodeoxyglucose F18*, Positron-Emission Tomography*, tau Proteins*, Aged, Biomarkers, Cohort Studies, Female, Humans, Male, Phosphorylation (* major topic)
Topic: Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research (Psychiatry and Mental health, Medicine), according to OpenAlex
Funding: Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata
Citations: not cited yet (Europe PMC); 26 references in the paper

Abstract

Purpose: To examine voxel-wise associations between plasma phosphorylated tau biomarkers and cerebellum-normalised [^18F]fluorodeoxyglucose ([^18F]FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) uptake in cognitively impaired patients, and whether these associations persist in a cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)-confirmed Alzheimer’s disease (AD) subgroup.

Methods: One hundred consecutive patients who underwent brain [^18F]FDG PET and plasma biomarker assessment within ≤ 6 months were included. Images were spatially normalised, smoothed, and divided voxel-wise by a subject-specific bilateral cerebellar reference value derived from Automated Anatomical Labelling 3 (AAL3) cerebellar regions. Voxel-wise multiple regressions tested associations with plasma Aβ42/Aβ40, p-tau181, p-tau181/Aβ42, p-tau217, and p-tau217/Aβ42, adjusting for age and sex, in the full cohort and the CSF-confirmed AD subgroup (n = 58).

Results: In the full cohort, plasma p-tau181 and p-tau181/Aβ42 showed negative associations with cerebellum-normalised [^18F]FDG uptake, predominantly in bilateral ventral temporal/fusiform regions. The strongest and most spatially consistent finding involved p-tau181/Aβ42. Plasma Aβ42/Aβ40 and p-tau217 showed no suprathreshold associations, whereas p-tau217/Aβ42 showed only a small focal cluster. In the CSF-confirmed AD subgroup, p-tau181/Aβ42 remained the most consistent tau-related marker, showing negative associations with cerebellum-normalised [^18F]FDG uptake in temporal/temporo-limbic and posterior cortical regions, whereas p-tau217 and p-tau217/Aβ42 showed no suprathreshold clusters.

Conclusions: After voxel-wise cerebellar normalisation, plasma p-tau181/Aβ42 showed the most robust association with [^18F]FDG PET hypometabolism, predominantly involving bilateral ventral temporal/fusiform regions in the full cohort and temporal/temporo-limbic and posterior cortical regions in the CSF-confirmed AD subgroup. The heterogeneous full-cohort findings may partly reflect AD-versus-non-AD biological separation. Overall, plasma tau biomarkers and [^18F]FDG PET provide complementary molecular and metabolic information.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00259-026-07939-7.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Code

The paper says that its authors' code is available on request: it was not published with the paper, so there is nothing to verify.

Code availability

Custom code/scripts used for image processing and statistical analyses are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Tracing map

A tracing map links a paper to the code its authors published: this paper has none (its code is available on request), so it has no map.

Data

No dataset and no data link were found in the paper.

Data availability

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Versions

The history of this record: each version stored by the harvester or made by a correction of its authors or of the maintainers of its code, and what changed in its facts. The texts of the paper (its abstract, its availability statements) are not part of it; versions that changed only those are not listed.

Version 2, 28 September 2026

  • Publisher: n/a → Springer Science+Business Media

Version 1, 28 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 7 authors, 10 keywords, 11 MeSH terms, 1 funder, 24 references.

Cite

This paper

Chiaravalloti, A., Motta, C., Bonomi, C. G., Poli, M., Di Russo, C., Schillaci, O., & Martorana, A. (2026). Plasma phosphorylated tau biomarkers map onto [^18F]FDG PET hypometabolism: a voxel-wise study in a clinical cohort with CSF-confirmed AD subgroup analysis. European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging, 53(10), 5699-5708. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-026-07939-7

BibTeX

@article{chiaravalloti2026plasma,
author = {Chiaravalloti, Agostino and Motta, Caterina and Bonomi, Chiara Giuseppina and Poli, Martina and Di Russo, Carmela and Schillaci, Orazio and Martorana, Alessandro},
title = {{Plasma phosphorylated tau biomarkers map onto [\textasciicircum{}18F]FDG PET hypometabolism: a voxel-wise study in a clinical cohort with CSF-confirmed AD subgroup analysis}},
journal = {European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging},
year = {2026},
month = may,
volume = {53},
number = {10},
pages = {5699--5708},
publisher = {Springer Science+Business Media},
issn = {1619-7070},
doi = {10.1007/s00259-026-07939-7},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-026-07939-7},
pmid = {42191948},
pmcid = {PMC13421210}
}

RIS

TY - JOUR
AU - Chiaravalloti, Agostino
AU - Motta, Caterina
AU - Bonomi, Chiara Giuseppina
AU - Poli, Martina
AU - Di Russo, Carmela
AU - Schillaci, Orazio
AU - Martorana, Alessandro
TI - Plasma phosphorylated tau biomarkers map onto [^18F]FDG PET hypometabolism: a voxel-wise study in a clinical cohort with CSF-confirmed AD subgroup analysis
T2 - European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging
J2 - Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/05/27
VL - 53
IS - 10
SP - 5699
EP - 5708
SN - 1619-7070
PB - Springer Science+Business Media
DO - 10.1007/s00259-026-07939-7
UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-026-07939-7
LA - en
ER -

CSL-JSON

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