Frontal Atrophy and CSF Tau Levels With Neuropsychiatric Symptoms in Patients With Cognitive Impairment

This database includes the raw data linked with the paper “ Frontal Atrophy and CSF Tau Levels With Neuropsychiatric Symptoms in Patients With Cognitive Impairment: A Memory Clinic Experience. ” published on “ Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience 5, March, 2021”.

Behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) are a distressful condition. We aimed to investigate the BPSD distribution in subjects with cognitive impairment, and the potential correlations between BPSD and neurodegeneration in terms of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) tau and brain atrophy.

One-hundred patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia (Alzheimer’s disease; Lewy-body disease, LBD; frontotemporal dementia; vascular dementia) underwent a complete diagnostic workup, including 3T-MRI and/or CT and CSF.

Cortical atrophy was assessed with MTA, PA and GCA-F scales. BPSD were rated using Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI), and BPSD clusters were defined according to the European Alzheimer Disease Consortium.

Delusions, hallucinations and psychosis cluster were differently distributed among the diagnostic groups (p<0.05, p<0.001, and p<0.05), with LBD patients showing higher scores for hallucinations (vs MCI, p<0.001, and AD, p<0.05) and psychosis cluster (vs MCI, p<0.05). In primary dementias, we found a negative trend between NPI total score and tau levels (p=0.08), while a positive relationship was observed in MCI (p=0.60). Higher GCA-F scores were associated to delusions and apathy (p<0.05, on both hemispheres) and to hallucinations (left: p<0.01, right: p<0.05). GCA-F scores were positively correlated with delusions and psychosis cluster (right: p<0.05), and agitation/aggression (left: p<0.05). Conversely, nighttime disturbances were positively correlated with both GCA-F and MTA scores (left: p<0.01; right: p<0.05).