Equivalence of plasma and serum for clinical measurement of p-tau217: comparative analyses of four blood-based assays

Background: Phosphorylated tau (p-tau) 217 is a promising blood biomarker for Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, most p-tau217 assays have been validated solely in ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) plasma, leaving the clinical applicability of serum p-tau217 largely unexplored despite serum being a preferred matrix in many clinical laboratories. To address this gap, we compared p-tau217 concentrations and diagnostic performances in matched plasma and serum samples using four research-use-only assays, including three from commercial sources i.e., Lumipulse, ALZpath, NULISA, and one from University of Pittsburgh.

Methods: Paired plasma and serum samples were processed from the same venipuncture collection and assessed with the four p-tau217 assays following manufacturer-recommended procedures in two research cohorts (N=84).

Results: Plasma and serum p-tau217 levels varied across assays; the ALZpath, Pittsburgh, and NULISA methods showed significantly lower p-tau217 levels in serum compared with plasma (p<0.0001), while Lumipulse showed higher or non-significant differences in serum. Yet, strong correlations (rho >0.8) were observed between plasma and serum p-tau217 pairs. Both plasma and serum p-tau217 demonstrated strong classification accuracies to differentiate clinical AD from normal controls, with high AUC (up to 0.963) for all methods. The exception was the Pittsburgh assay, where plasma p-tau217 had superior AUC than serum p-tau217 (plasma: 0.912, serum: 0.844). The rest of the assays had equivalent accuracies in both matrices.

Conclusions: Serum p-tau217 performs equivalently as plasma p-tau217 for most assessed assays. Serum can therefore be used in place of plasma for p-tau217 assessment for research and clinical purposes.