Does amnesia specifically predict Alzheimer's pathology? A neuropathological study

Maxime Bertoux (1) , Pascaline Cassagnaud , Thibaud Lebouvier (2) , Florence Lebert , Marie Sarazin , Isabelle Le Ber (3) , Bruno Dubois (4) , Brain Bank , Sophie Auriacombe (5) , Didier Hannequin (6) , David Wallon (6) , Mathieu Ceccaldi (7) , Claude-Alain Maurage (1) , Vincent Deramecourt (1) , Florence Pasquier (1)

1 LilNCog - Lille Neurosciences & Cognition - U 1172
2 Service d'anesthésie réanimation chirurgicale [Rennes]
3 ICM - Institut du Cerveau = Paris Brain Institute
4 Neuro-anatomie fonctionnelle du comportement et de ses troubles
5 CMRR Nice - Centre Mémoire de Ressources et de Recherche [Nice]
6 Service de neurologie [Rouen]
7 TIMONE - Hôpital de la Timone [CHU - APHM]

Amnesia is a key component of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and the most important feature of its clinical diagnosis but its specificity has recently been challenged. This study investigated the ability of amnesia to predict AD in a clinicopathological dementia series. Ninety-one patients to which free and cued verbal memory assessment was administered during early cognitive decline, were followed until autopsy. Patients’ histological diagnoses were classified as pure-AD, mixed-AD and non-AD pathologies. Data-driven automated classification procedures explored the correspondence between memory performance and pathological diagnoses. Classifications revealed three clusters of performance reflecting different levels of amnesia. Little correspondence between these clusters and the presence of AD pathology was retrieved. A third of patients with pure/mixed AD pathology were non-amnesic at presentation and ≈45% of patients without AD pathology were amnesic. Data-driven prediction of AD pathology based on memory also had a poor accuracy. Free and cued memory assessments are fair tools to diagnose an amnesic syndrome but lack of accuracy to predict AD pathology.

Domaines: Neurosciences; Psychologie; Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]; Médecine humaine et pathologie; Anatomie, Histologie, Anatomopathologie [q-bio.TO]; Psychiatrie et santé mentale

Maxime Bertoux, Pascaline Cassagnaud, Thibaud Lebouvier, Florence Lebert, Marie Sarazin, et al.. Does amnesia specifically predict Alzheimer's pathology? A neuropathological study. Neurobiology of Aging, In press. ⟨hal-02898941⟩