RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Neurofibrillary tangles but not senile plaques parallel duration and severity of Alzheimer's disease
JF Neurology
JO Neurology
FD Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
SP 631
OP 631
DO 10.1212/WNL.42.3.631
VO 42
IS 3
A1 Arriagada, Paulina V.
A1 Growdon, John H.
A1 Hedley-Whyte, E. Tessa
A1 Hyman, Bradley T.
YR 1992
UL http://n.neurology.org/content/42/3/631.abstract
AB We studied the accumulation of neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) and senile plaques (SPs) in 10 Alzheimer's disease patients who had been examined during life. We counted NFTs and SPs in 13 cytoarchitectural regions representing limbic, primary sensory, and association cortices, and in subcortical neurotransmitter-specific areas. The degree of neuropathologic change was compared with the severity of dementia, as assessed by the Blessed Dementia Scale and duration of illness. We found that (1) the severity of dementia was positively related to the number of NFTs in neocortex, but not to the degree of SP deposition; (2) NFTs accumulate in a consistent pattern reflecting hierarchic vulnerability of individual cytoarchitectural fields; (3) NFTs appeared in the entorhinal cortex, CA1/subiculum field of the hippocampal formation, and the amygdala early in the disease process; and (4) the degree of SP deposition was also related to a hierarchic vulnerability of certain brain areas to accumulate SPs, but the pattern of SP distribution was different from that of NFT.