Longitudinal cognitive biomarkers predicting symptom onset in presymptomatic frontotemporal dementia

INTRODUCTION: We performed 4-year follow-up neuropsychological assessment to investigate cognitive decline and the prognostic abilities from presymptomatic to symptomatic familial frontotemporal dementia (FTD). METHODS: Presymptomatic MAPT (n = 15) and GRN mutation carriers (n = 31), and healthy controls (n = 39) underwent neuropsychological assessment every 2 years. Eight mutation carriers (5 MAPT, 3 GRN) became symptomatic. We investigated cognitive decline with multilevel regression modeling; the prognostic performance was assessed with ROC analyses and stepwise logistic regression. RESULTS: MAPT converters declined on language, attention, executive function, social cognition, and memory, and GRN converters declined on attention and executive function (p < 0.05). Cognitive decline in ScreeLing phonology (p = 0.046) and letter fluency (p = 0.046) were predictive for conversion to non-fluent variant PPA, and decline on categorical fluency (p = 0.025) for an underlying MAPT mutation. DISCUSSION: Using longitudinal neuropsychological assessment, we detected a mutation-specific pattern of cognitive decline, potentially suggesting prognostic value of neuropsychological trajectories in conversion to symptomatic FTD. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s00415-018-8850-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.