Objective: To explore whether plasma phosphorylated tau (p-Tau) 181 and p-Tau231 levels are associated with cognition in a Parkinson’s Disease (PD) cohort.

Background: We recently showed that plasma levels of p-Tau181 and p-Tau231 were increased in Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) and associated with more rapid cognitive decline. Similarly, some studies have reported that cerebrospinal fluid total Tau, p-Tau, and p-Tau/ amyloid-β42 levels are associated with PD-related dementia and can predict cognitive decline in PD cases.

Method: We included PD and control subjects from the European-DLB Consortium. Plasma p-Tau181 and p-Tau231 levels were measured with an in-house single-molecule array assay. The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) was used to measure cognition. We fitted a linear regression with the MMSE scores to evaluate the association of plasma p-Tau181 and p-Tau231 levels with global cognition.

Results: The characteristics of the 409 participants can be found in Table 1. There were no statistically significant differences in the concentration of either plasma p-Tau biomarker between the PD and control group (p-Tau181, 1.58 pg/mL; 95% CI, 0.69-2.47 pg/mL; P-value = 0.44; p-Tau231, 1.53 pg/mL; 95% CI, 0.85-2.21 pg/mL; P-value = 0.14) even after adjusting for age, sex Figure 1). No association was found between plasma p-Tau181 and p-Tau231 levels and MMSE scores in the PD group (Figure 2).

Conclusion: Plasmatic p-Tau levels were not associated with PD diagnosis or to cognitive impairment. It might be necessary to further stage PD patients as well as include PD-related dementia cases to see if this trend is maintained in future studies.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/plasma-p-tau181-and-p-tau231-in-parkinsons-disease/