Clustering of pathological features in Alzheimer's disease: Clinicaland neuroanatomical aspects
Z. Nagy
Bok Engelsk 1996
| Utgitt | 1996
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| Omfang | Side 121- 127
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| Opplysninger | We have analyzed the tendency of amyloid load, neuritic plaques andneurofibrillary tangles (NFT) in the hippocampus and neocortex tooccur in clusters in 49 consecutive cases of Alzheimer's disease(AD). This clustering tendency of the pathology was analysed inrelation to severity of clinical disease assessed within 6 monthsbefore death, duration and age at onset of disease and at death.Amyloid plaques showed only a slight tendency to cluster togetherwhile neuritic plaques and, even more, NFT were clearly clustered. Agreater clustering tendency was associated with more severe clinicalimpairment with particularly strong correlations being found betweenthe clustering tendency of NFT in the hippocampus and clinical memorydeficit, and between the clustering tendency of NFT in the parietalneocortex and overall cognitive deficit. Neuritic plaques showedsimilar but less pronounced and robust correlations betweenclustering and cognitive status. In the hippocampus NFT clusteringwas also negatively correlated with age at death, but not duration ofdisease nor age of disease onset. We conclude that clusteringcharacterises neuritic pathology but not diffuse amyloid deposits andsignificantly affects cognition. The discrepancies between the groupdiagnosed as AD-only and the patient group that contained allpatients, including the ones with mixed pathology, lead us to believethat any additional pathology might have a significant effect on thecognitive status of AD patients.
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