Somatic CAG repeat expansion in blood associates with biomarkers of neurodegeneration in Huntington’s disease decades before clinical motor diagnosis

Abstract

Huntington's disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease with the age at which characteristic symptoms manifest strongly influenced by inherited HTT CAG length. Somatic CAG expansion occurs throughout life and understanding the impact of somatic expansion on neurodegeneration is key to developing therapeutic targets. In 57 HD gene expanded (HDGE) individuals, ~23 years before their predicted clinical motor diagnosis, no significant decline in clinical, cognitive or neuropsychiatric function was observed over 4.5 years compared with 46 controls (false discovery rate (FDR) > 0.3). However, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) markers showed very early signs of neurodegeneration in HDGE with elevated neurofilament light (NfL) protein, an indicator of neuroaxonal damage (FDR = 3.2 × 10-12), and reduced proenkephalin (PENK), a surrogate marker for the state of striatal medium spiny neurons (FDR = 2.6 × 10-3), accompanied by brain atrophy, predominantly in the caudate (FDR = 5.5 × 10-10) and putamen (FDR = 1.2 × 10-9). Longitudinal increase in somatic CAG repeat expansion ratio (SER) in blood was a significant predictor of subsequent caudate (FDR = 0.072) and putamen (FDR = 0.148) atrophy. Atypical loss of interruption HTT repeat structures, known to predict earlier age at clinical motor diagnosis, was associated with substantially faster caudate and putamen atrophy. We provide evidence in living humans that the influence of CAG length on HD neuropathology is mediated by somatic CAG repeat expansion. These critical mechanistic insights into the earliest neurodegenerative changes will inform the design of preventative clinical trials aimed at modulating somatic expansion.