The development of methods for in vivo detection of cerebral beta amyloid retention and tau accumulation have been increasingly useful in characterizing preclinical Alzheimer’s disease (AD). While the association between these biomarkers and eventual AD has been demonstrated among cognitively intact older adults, the link between biomarkers and neurocognitive ability remains unclear. We conducted a meta-analysis to test the hypothesis that cognitively intact older adults would show statistically discernable differences in neuropsychological performance by amyloid status (amyloid negative = A-, amyloid positive = A+). We secondarily hypothesized a third group characterized by either CSF tau pathology or neurodegeneration, in addition to amyloidosis (A+/N+ or Stage 2), would show lower neuropsychology scores than the amyloid positive group (A+/N- or Stage 1) when compared to the amyloid negative group. Pubmed, PsychINFO, and other sources were searched for relevant articles, yielding 775 total sources. After review for inclusion/exclusion criteria, duplicates, and risk of bias, 61 studies were utilized in the final meta-analysis. Results showed A+ was associated with poorer performance in the domains of global cognitive function, memory, language, visuospatial ability, processing speed, and attention/working memory/executive functions when compared to A-. A+/N+ showed lower performances on memory measures when compared to A+/N- in secondary analyses based on a smaller subset of studies. Results support the notion that neuropsychological measures are sensitive to different stages of preclinical AD among cognitively intact older adults. Further research is needed to determine what constitutes meaningful differences in neuropsychological performance among cognitively intact older adults.

中文翻译：

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临床前阿尔茨海默氏病的可检测神经心理学差异：荟萃分析。

用于体内检测脑β淀粉样蛋白保留和tau积累的方法的开发在表征临床前阿尔茨海默氏病（AD）方面越来越有用。尽管已经在认知完好的老年人中证明了这些生物标志物与最终AD之间的关联，但生物标志物与神经认知能力之间的联系仍不清楚。我们进行了一项荟萃分析，以检验以下假设的假设：认知完好的成年人通过淀粉样蛋白状态（淀粉样蛋白阴性= A-，淀粉样蛋白阳性= A +）在神经心理表现上显示出统计学上可辨别的差异。其次，我们假设除了淀粉样变性病（A + / N +或第2阶段）外，第三组的特征是CSF tau病理或神经退行性变，与淀粉样蛋白阴性组相比，它将显示出比淀粉样蛋白阳性组（A + / N-或第1阶段）更低的神经心理学评分。搜索Pubmed，PsychINFO和其他来源的相关文章，总共获得775个来源。在对纳入/排除标准，重复项和偏倚风险进行审查后，在最终的荟萃分析中使用了61项研究。结果显示，与A-相比，A +在整体认知功能，记忆，语言，视觉空间能力，处理速度以及注意力/工作记忆/执行功能方面的表现较差。与基于较小研究子集的次要分析中的A + / N-相比，A + / N +在记忆测度上的表现较低。结果支持以下观点：在认知完好的成年人中，神经心理学措施对临床前AD的不同阶段敏感。需要进一步的研究来确定什么构成认知完好的成年人在神经心理表现上的有意义的差异。