Cognitive and Brain Structure Correlates of Plasma Biomarkers in Traumatic Encephalopathy Syndrome

Background Traumatic encephalopathy syndrome (TES) is a proposed framework for the clinical syndrome resulting from chronic traumatic encephalopathy and other neurodegenerative effects of repetitive head impacts (RHI). TES symptoms can mirror Alzheimer's disease (AD) despite absence of hallmark AD pathology. We investigated whether GFAP, NfL, and IL‐6 correlated with cognition and brain volume changes within TES relative to AD. Method We studied 96 participants from the UCSF Memory and Aging Center (N=35 RHI/TES; 24 of whom were AD biomarker‐negative, TESAD‐; N=61 biomarker‐confirmed AD phenotype, no RHI; Table 1). Plasma was analyzed for GFAP, NfL, and IL‐6 (age‐ and sex‐adjusted). Cognitive measures included composite memory and executive functioning scores (demographically‐adjusted). MRI was obtained concurrent to blood draws and several regions of interest were analyzed (demographic‐ and total intracranial volume‐adjusted): frontal, temporal, parietal, occipital, hippocampus, subcortical. Spearman’s rho assessed associations between plasma biomarkers, cognition, and brain volume. A priori alpha was p