Blood-based Aβ42 increases in the earliest pre-pathological stage before decreasing with progressive amyloid pathology in preclinical models and human subjects: opening new avenues for prevention

Blood-based (BB) biomarkers for Aβ and tau can indicate pathological processes in the brain, in the early pathological, even pre-symptomatic stages in Alzheimer’s disease. However, the relation between BB biomarkers and AD-related processes in the brain in the earliest pre-pathology stage before amyloid pathology develops, and their relation with total brain concentrations of Aβ and tau, is poorly understood. This stage presents a critical window for the earliest prevention of AD. Preclinical models with well-defined temporal progression to robust amyloid and tau pathology provide a unique opportunity to study this relation and were used here to study the link between BB biomarkers with AD-related processes in pre- and pathological stages. We performed a cross-sectional study at different ages assessing the link between BB concentrations and AD-related processes in the brain. This was complemented with a longitudinal analysis and with analysis of age-related changes in a small cohort of human subjects. We found that BB-tau concentrations increased in serum, correlating with progressive development of tau pathology and with increasing tau aggregates and p-tau concentrations in brain in TauP301S mice (PS19) developing tauopathy. BB-Aβ42 concentrations in serum decreased between 4.5 and 9 months of age, correlating with the progressive development of robust amyloid pathology in APP/PS1 (5xFAD) mice, in line with previous findings. Most importantly, BB-Aβ42 concentrations significantly increased between 1.5 and 4.5 months, i.e., in the earliest pre-pathological stage, before robust amyloid pathology develops in the brain, indicating biphasic BB-Aβ42 dynamics. Furthermore, increasing BB-Aβ42 in the pre-pathological phase, strongly correlated with increasing Aβ42 concentrations in brain. Our subsequent longitudinal analysis of BB-Aβ42 in 5xFAD mice, confirmed biphasic BB-Aβ42, with an initial increase, before decreasing with progressive robust pathology. Furthermore, in human samples, BB-Aβ42 concentrations were significantly higher in old (> 60 years) compared to young (< 50 years) subjects, as well as to age-matched AD patients, further supporting age-dependent increase of Aβ42 concentrations in the earliest pre-pathological phase, before amyloid pathology. Also BB-Aβ40 concentrations were found to increase in the earliest pre-pathological phase both in preclinical models and human subjects, while subsequent significantly decreasing concentrations in the pathological phase were characteristic for BB-Aβ42. Together our data indicate that BB biomarkers reflect pathological processes in brain of preclinical models with amyloid and tau pathology, both in the pathological and pre-pathological phase. Our data indicate a biphasic pattern of BB-Aβ42 in preclinical models and a human cohort. And most importantly, we here show that BB-Aβ increased and correlated with increasing concentrations of Aβ in the brain, in the earliest pre-pathological stage in a preclinical model. Our data thereby identify a novel critical window for prevention, using BB-Aβ as marker for accumulating Aβ in the brain, in the earliest pre-pathological stage, opening new avenues for personalized early preventive strategies against AD, even before amyloid pathology develops. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00401-022-02458-9.