Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) encompasses distinct pathophysiologically heterogenous disorders with different genetic and cellular disease mechanisms. The objective of this study is to compare the constellation of
biomarkers of neurodegeneration in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to the FTD type categorized by clinical symptoms. We investigated the levels of Phospho181-tau, Total-tau, Beta-amyloid1-42, Neurofilament light chain, and
Progranulin in the CSF of n = 99 FTD patients regarding to the different subtypes of FTD, including
semantic dementia (SD), progressive non-
fluent aphasia (PNFA), behavioral variant FTD (bvFTD). We compared these groups to patients without
neurodegenerative disorders and another cohort encompassing
tauopathies with distinct clinical syndromes (Cortico basal syndrome and
progressive supranuclear palsy) and logopenic PNFA (lPPA) as another disorder with predominant speech disturbance. CSF-
Progranulin levels were significantly lower in FTD type patients with
semantic dementia and behavioral variant FTD mainly attributed to the Tar-
DNA-Binding-Protein (TDP) 43 compared to predominantly Tau-mediated PNFA (p < 0.05). Also, neurofilament light chain was significantly higher (p < 0.036) in all FTD patients especially in SD patients (p < 0.01). CSF-Nfl levels also distinguished SD patients from logopenic Alzheimers patients (p < 0.05). In sum, CSF-Neurofilament light chain and CSF-
Progranulin seem to be promising
biomarkers for FTD, the latter predominantly for assumed TDP43-mediated FTD.