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AMYLOID BURDEN AND VASCULAR RISK FACTORS CORRELATE WITH REGIONAL CEREBRAL BLOOD FLOW IN COGNITIVELY UNIMPAIRED POPULATION
Abstract
Aims
To assess the regional relationship between Cerebral Blood Flow (CBF), amyloid burden and vascular risk factors (VRF) in a cognitively unimpaired population.
Methods
We included 196 (average age of 70±7.3 years; 57% female) cognitively unimpaired participants from the EMIF-AD PreclinAD Twin60++ cohort. Four years after baseline, 135 subjects were scanned again. Using PET imaging, cortical amyloid burden was quantified with the Centiloid method globally and for 4 early amyloid accumulation regions extracted from the LEAP atlas (Figure1): Early Frontal (orbital frontal + basal frontal), Precuneus, Superior Frontal Gyrus and Lingual Gyrus. Arterial Spin Labeling (ASL) imaging was used to quantify CBF with ExploreASL both with the LEAP atlas and the Vascular Territories (VT) atlas (Figures 1&2). Associations between CBF, amyloid and VRF (Framingham) were assessed using generalized estimating equations (GEEs). Models were adjusted for age, sex, and twin dependency. Both global and regional values were investigated.
Results
We found significant associations between regional Centiloid and CBF in corresponding regions from the LEAP atlas (Table1). A significant interaction between global Centiloid and Framingham scores on VT CBF values was found, both globally and regionally (Table2). Longitudinally, only Precuneus centiloid at baseline significantly predicted total CBF changes over time (Figure3).
Conclusions
In this study, we investigated the association between amyloid and CBF for neurodegenerative (amyloid) ROIs and for vascular (ASL) territories. We found regional amyloid burden in AD signature regions to be associated with altered CBF in cognitively intact individuals. Future work will include the investigation of their joint impact on cognitive performance.