| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,900,000)
Fiscal Year 1997: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 1996: ¥1,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,200,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Neurofibrillary tangles have been known for years to occur in the neurons of the hippocampus and cerebral cortex of patients with Alzheimer type dementia. Similar fibrillary changes also occur in the astrocytes of a certain degenerative diseases, particularly progressive supranuclear palsy and corticobasal degeneration. Such astrocytic fibrillary tangles (AFTs), first reported in 1992, have been stained with anti-tau antibodies. However, we found novel, tau-negative AFTs in 2 patients with familial Parkinson disease. We investigated the brains of various diseases to elucidate the specificity and heterogeneity of AFTs. We stained sections of the brain by methenamine silver and Gallyas-Braak methods, and the sections which contained AFT were further immunostained with anti-tau antibodies. We found tau-positive AFTs in 1 patient with corticobasal degeneration, and tau-negative AFTsin 1 patient with schizophrenia, in addition to 2 patients with the familial Parkinson disease. We also studied the methenamine silver-stained section of the tau-negative AFTs with electron microscope, but could not identify the exact constituents of the AFTs. In assition, we found numerous neurofibrillary tangles in the neurons of the second to third layrs of the cerebral cortex in the 2 patients with familial Parkinson disease. The tangles consisted of 15-nm straight tubules similar to those of progressive supranuclear palsy, but were tau-negative. Such tau-negative neurofibrillary tangles have not been reported previously. Patients with the familiar Parkinson disease has been published in Acta Neuropathologica (95 : 15-27, 1998), including the 2 patients who showed the new types of tau-negative AFTs and neurofibrillary tangles.
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