Expression of nestin in ballooned neurons in patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Nestin is an intermediate filament protein and mainly expressed during the development of the central nervous system. Recently, we reported that nestin is present in the cytoplasm, dendrites, and torpedoes of Purkinje cells in patients from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease as the pathological change advances. In this study, we focused on the temporal and frontal lobes of the same patients in order to examine the ballooned neurons using anti-human nestin antibody. Although the ballooned neurons showed cytoplasmic immunoreactivity against nestin, the level of nestin immunoreactivity differed in each ballooned neuron. These findings could suggest that ballooned neurons are being reactivated to promote survival, although the role of nestin is not clear.