Multisite assessment of aging-related tau astrogliopathy (ARTAG)

Gabor G. Kovacs, Sharon X. Xie, Edward B. Lee, John L. Robinson, Carrie Caswell, David J. Irwin, Jon B. Toledo, Victoria E. Johnson, Douglas H. Smith, Irina Alafuzoff, Johannes Attems, Janos Bencze, Kevin F. Bieniek, Eileen H. Bigio, Istvan Bodi, Herbert Budka, Dennis W. Dickson, Brittany N. Dugger, Charles Duyckaerts, Isidro FerrerShelley L. Forrest, Ellen Gelpi, Stephen M. Gentleman, Giorgio Giaccone, Lea T. Grinberg, Glenda M. Halliday, Kimmo J. Hatanpaa, Patrick R. Hof, Monika Hofer, Tibor Hortobágyi, James W. Ironside, Andrew King, Julia Kofler, Enikö Kövari, Jillian J. Kril, Seth Love, Ian R. Mackenzie, Qinwen Mao, Radoslav Matej, Catriona McLean, David G. Munoz, Melissa E. Murray, Janna Neltner, Peter T. Nelson, Diane Ritchie, Roberta D. Rodriguez, Zdenek Rohan, Annemieke Rozemuller, Kenji Sakai, Christian Schultz, Danielle Seilhean, Vanessa Smith, Pawel Tacik, Hitoshi Takahashi, Masaki Takao, Dietmar Rudolf Thal, Serge Weis, Stephen B. Wharton, Charles L. White, John M. Woulfe, Masahito Yamada, John Q. Trojanowski

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

38 Scopus citations

Abstract

Aging-related tau astrogliopathy (ARTAG) is a recently introduced terminology. To facilitate the consistent identification of ARTAG and to distinguish it from astroglial tau pathologies observed in the primary frontotemporal lobar degeneration tauopathies we evaluated how consistently neuropathologists recognize (1) different astroglial tau immunoreactivities, including those of ARTAG and those associated with primary tauopathies (Study 1); (2) ARTAG types (Study 2A); and (3) ARTAG severity (Study 2B). Microphotographs and scanned sections immunostained for phosphorylated tau (AT8) were made available for download and preview. Percentage of agreement and kappa values with 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated for each evaluation. The overall agreement for Study 1 was > 60% with a kappa value of 0.55 (95% CI 0.433-0.645). Moderate agreement (> 90%, kappa 0.48, 95% CI 0.457-0.900) was reached in Study 2A for the identification of ARTAG pathology for each ARTAG subtype (kappa 0.37-0.72), whereas fair agreement (kappa 0.40, 95% CI 0.341-0.445) was reached for the evaluation of ARTAG severity. The overall assessment of ARTAG showed moderate agreement (kappa 0.60, 95% CI 0.534-0.653) among raters. Our study supports the application of the current harmonized evaluation strategy for ARTAG with a slight modification of the evaluation of its severity.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)605-619
Number of pages15
JournalJournal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology
Volume76
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2017

Keywords

  • ARTAG
  • Aging
  • Digital pathology
  • Interrater agreement
  • Neuropathology
  • Tau
  • Tau-astrogliopathy

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