Abstract
Tau proteins accumulation and their spreading pattern were affected by gender in cognitive impairment patients, especially in the progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, it was unclear whether the gender effects for tau deposition influenced by amyloid deposition. The aim of this study was to investigate gender differences for tau depositions in Aβ positive (A+) subjects. In this study, tau and amyloid positron emission tomography images, structural magnetic resonance imaging images, and demographic information were collected from 179 subjects in Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database and 63 subjects from Huashan Hospital. Subjects were classified as T+ or T− according to the presence or absence of tau (T) biomarkers. We used two-sample t test and one-way analysis of variance test to analyze the effect of gender with adjusting for age, years of education, and Minimum Mental State Examination. In the ADNI cohort, we found differences in Tau deposition in fusiform gyrus, inferior temporal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus between the female T+ (FT+) and male T+ (MT+) groups (p < 0.05). Tau deposition did not differ significantly between female T− (FT−) and male T− (MT−) subjects (p > 0.05). In the Huashan Hospital cohort, there was no difference in Tau deposition between FT+ and MT+ (p > 0.05). The results show that tau depositions significantly increased in females in above brain regions. Our findings suggest that tau deposition is influenced by gender in the A+ subjects. This result has important clinical implications for the development of gender-guided early interventions for patients with both Tau and Amyloid depositions.
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Data Availability
Data from the ADNI cohort are available on the website (https://adni.loni.usc.edu/). Data from the Huashan cohort were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are, however, available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of Huashan Hospital.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82020108013, 81971641, 82071200, 82021002), the research project of Shanghai Health Commission (2020YJZX0111), the Shanghai Aging and Maternal and Child Health Research Special Project (Grant 2020YJZX0111) and the Clinical Research Plan of Shanghai Hospital Development Center (Grants SHDC2020CR1038B and SHDC2020CR4007). Also, special thanks to HWZ, who helped us with the visual assessment of the images of the Huashan cohort.
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Zhang, Y., Lu, J., Wang, M. et al. Influence of Gender on Tau Precipitation in Alzheimer’s Disease According to ATN Research Framework. Phenomics 3, 565–575 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43657-022-00076-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43657-022-00076-9