Original ArticlesApoptosis-Related Protein Expression in the Hippocampus in Alzheimer’s Disease
Section snippets
Methods
We studied 40 patients, some of whom were part of the Oxford Project to Investigate Memory and Ageing (OPTIMA), others of whom were selected from the archive material of the Neuropathology Department of the Radcliffe Infirmary.
Three of our cases were controls with no central nervous system pathology. Nine patients were DS sufferers with varying degrees of AD-related pathology, five had cortical Lewy bodies with AD pathology, and the remaining 23 cases had varying degrees of AD-related plaque
Results
The density of neuritic and diffuse plaques as well as the labeling index (the percentage of cells stained with AT8) for the AT8 antibody were used as a reference for the assessment of the severity of AD-related pathology.
Discussion
There is increasing evidence that apoptotic mechanisms are involved in cell death in Alzheimer’s disease 37, 40. However, the technical limitations of the DNA end labeling (TUNEL) method [41], on one hand, and the multitude of mechanisms that can lead to apoptosis 4, 23, 24, 32, 34, 43, on the other, make it necessary to elucidate the protein pathways involved in the initiation of neuronal death in neurodegenerative disorders such as AD.
In contrast to previous reports, we did not find
Acknowledgements
We thank members of OPTIMA and Dr. B. McDonald for kindly providing some of the patients and Mrs S. Litchfield and Miss M. Reading for valuable technical help. The study was supported by a grant from Bristol-Myers Squibb.
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