Validation of longitudinal change in proper name recall with pTau217 as a marker of early cognitive decline in cognitively unimpaired adults at risk for Alzheimer's disease dementia

Basche, K ORCID: 0000-0001-5767-8507, He, D, Langhough, R, Jonaitis, E, Du, L, Bruno, D ORCID: 0000-0003-1943-9905, Wilson, R, Hermann, B, Johnson, S and Mueller, K (2026) Validation of longitudinal change in proper name recall with pTau217 as a marker of early cognitive decline in cognitively unimpaired adults at risk for Alzheimer's disease dementia. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. ISSN 1387-2877

Preview

Text Validation of longitudinal change in proper name recall with pTau217 as a marker of early cognitive decline in cognitively unimpaired adults at risk for Alzheimer's disease dementia.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (418kB) | Preview

Abstract

Background
Previous work has shown that proper name recall from the Logical Memory (LM) task is sensitive to PET and cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in older adult populations. These findings indicate potential utility in identifying preclinical AD.

Objective
The purpose of this study is to validate previous findings of the association of proper name recall and blood-based plasma pTau217.

Methods
Participants came from the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer's Prevention study. We fit linear mixed effects models of longitudinal LM and proper name recall as a function of most recent pTau217 values. Follow-up analyses added interaction terms to models for group differences in sex and APOE ε4 allele carriage. As an exploratory aim, logistic regression models were used to examine if proper name recall aided in predicting clinical diagnosis.

Results
Participants with higher concentrations of pTau217 showed a steeper decline on both conventional LM and proper name recall. APOE ε4 allele carriers with higher concentrations of pTau217 showed a greater decline in longitudinal task performance, while there was no significant interaction for sex, indicating that men and women with high pTau217 show similar rates of decline.

Conclusions
Our findings validate that proper name recall is sensitive to blood-based pTau217. Measuring proper name recall may be an efficient marker assessing early cognitive change that could be leveraged when designing future cognitive tests.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	1103 Clinical Sciences; 1109 Neurosciences; 1702 Cognitive Sciences; Neurology & Neurosurgery; 3202 Clinical sciences; 3209 Neurosciences; 5202 Biological psychology
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Divisions:	Psychology (from Sep 2019)
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Date of acceptance:	3 March 2026
Date of first compliant Open Access:	12 May 2026
Date Deposited:	11 May 2026 11:38
Last Modified:	12 May 2026 00:50
DOI or ID number:	10.1177/13872877261446477
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/28548

View Item