TY - JOUR AU - Vlegels, Naomi AU - Knuth, Nicoló L AU - Steiner, Konstantin A AU - Zhang, Linjie AU - Vix, Apolline L AU - Moumin, Dilara AU - Mirzen, Irem AU - Khalifeh, Nada AU - Forster, Charlotte AU - Gesierich, Benno AU - Müller, Franziska AU - Lohse, Philipp AU - Filler, Jule AU - Fang, Rong AU - Klein, Matthias AU - Dimitriadis, Konstantinos AU - Franzmeier, Nicolai AU - Liebig, Thomas AU - Endres, Matthias AU - Görtler, Michael AU - Petzold, Gabor C AU - Wunderlich, Silke AU - Zerr, Inga AU - Field, Thalia S AU - Pham, Mirko AU - Swartz, Richard H AU - Poli, Sven AU - Berrouschot, Jörg AU - Zafar, Atif AU - Schneider, Hauke AU - Shankar, Jai J AU - Aamodt, Anne Hege AU - Minnerup, Jens AU - Mandzia, Jennifer L AU - Reimann, Gernot AU - Psychogios, Marios-Nikos AU - Mundiyanapurath, Sibu AU - Reich, Arno AU - Yeo, Leonard L L AU - Duering, Marco AU - Reidler, Paul AU - Goyal, Mayank AU - Tymianski, Michael AU - Hill, Michael D AU - Dichgans, Martin AU - Tiedt, Steffen TI - Brain-derived tau for monitoring brain injury in acute ischemic stroke. JO - Science translational medicine VL - 18 IS - 832 SN - 1946-6234 CY - Washington, DC PB - AAAS M1 - DZNE-2026-00073 SP - eadz1280 PY - 2026 AB - A specific and accurate blood test for acute brain injury could help monitor infarct growth in ischemic stroke and serve as a surrogate end point in clinical trials. Using a single-molecule detection assay, we assessed plasma brain-derived tau (BD-tau), a marker selectively quantifying tau protein from the central nervous system, in a prospective cohort of 502 patients with acute ischemic stroke with serial blood sampling from admission to day 7. Higher BD-tau concentrations at admission were associated with more extensive early brain injury on computed tomography and predicted larger final infarct volumes. BD-tau increases from admission to day 2 were related to infarct growth. BD-tau concentrations rose until day 7 and were higher in patients with secondary events, including recurrent stroke. After thrombectomy, the rise of BD-tau was smaller in patients with complete versus incomplete recanalization. BD-tau outperformed other blood markers and imaging metrics in predicting 90-day functional outcome across infarct size strata and time points. In an independent multicenter prospective cohort (N = 519), BD-tau showed higher performance than magnetic resonance imaging-derived final infarct volume in predicting functional outcomes at 3, 12, and 36 months. In the biomarker substudy of a phase 3 trial assessing nerinetide in patients with ischemic stroke (N = 193), BD-tau showed predictive performance comparable to the other cohorts, mediated the relationship between recanalization and functional outcome, and showed a 49 KW - Humans KW - Male KW - tau Proteins: blood KW - tau Proteins: metabolism KW - Ischemic Stroke: blood KW - Ischemic Stroke: complications KW - Ischemic Stroke: diagnostic imaging KW - Female KW - Aged KW - Biomarkers: blood KW - Brain: metabolism KW - Brain: pathology KW - Middle Aged KW - Brain Injuries: blood KW - Brain Injuries: complications KW - Prospective Studies KW - Magnetic Resonance Imaging KW - Tomography, X-Ray Computed KW - tau Proteins (NLM Chemicals) KW - Biomarkers (NLM Chemicals) LB - PUB:(DE-HGF)16 C6 - pmid:41533774 DO - DOI:10.1126/scitranslmed.adz1280 UR - https://pub.dzne.de/record/284030 ER -