1. Late onset dementia with argyrophilic grains and subcortical tangles or atypical progressive supranuclear palsy?
- Author
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Sylvia Quijada, Eliezer Masliah, Lawrence A. Hansen, Richard DeTeresa, M. Alford, Robert D. Terry, and Joachim Kauss
- Subjects
Pathology ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Silver Staining ,Intermediate Filaments ,Hippocampus ,Substantia nigra ,Progressive supranuclear palsy ,Choline O-Acetyltransferase ,Alzheimer Disease ,mental disorders ,medicine ,Dementia ,Humans ,Antigens ,Aged ,Aged, 80 and over ,Amyloid beta-Peptides ,Brain ,Neurofibrillary tangle ,Neurofibrillary Tangles ,medicine.disease ,Entorhinal cortex ,Immunohistochemistry ,nervous system diseases ,Subthalamic nucleus ,Microscopy, Electron ,Neurology ,Neurology (clinical) ,Supranuclear Palsy, Progressive ,Alzheimer's disease ,Psychology - Abstract
Most clinically demented elderly patients are found at autopsy to have Alzheimer's disease, multi-infarct dementia, Parkinson's disease, Pick's disease, or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. We studied 5 patients clinically characterized by late onset dementia whose brains showed no pathological evidence of Alzheimer's disease, or any other specific neuropathological diagnosis. We found argyrophilic grains, coiled bodies, abundant Alz-50-positive and thioflavine S-negative neurofibrillary tangles, and neuropil threads in the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, locus ceruleus, substantia nigra, subthalamic nucleus, and inferior olives. Ultrastructurally, the grains, threads, and tangles were composed of straight tubulofilamentous structures, 25 nm in diameter, similar to those found in patients with progressive supranuclear palsy but different from the paired helical filaments of patients with Alzheimer's disease. These findings suggest that the late onset dementia with argyrophilic grains syndrome is also characterized by the presence of tangles and threads with the topographical distribution of progressive supranuclear palsy.
- Published
- 1991