[Neuropathology of the amnesia syndrome in old age].
In the 8-10th decade of life, people can be found who are not demented in the sense of WHO definition, but who are amnestic ("a memory problem only"). This defect is probably a result of the lesion of recent declarative memory. Immediate and remote memory are almost intact. Neuropathology of 17 such brains found numerous plaques and tangles in amygdalas and especially tangles in the IIth and IIIth strata of the entorhinal cortex and in subicula of hippocampi in 11 out of them. The number of plaques and tangles in frontal, parietal and temporal neocortex in these cases was not significant. In two other cases no significant ó "alzheimer-like" changes were found, but there was numerical atrophy of neurons of CA 1 sector of hippocampi in their caudal half perhaps due to chronic ischaemic lesion in one of them. In the other one there was an infarction of the left isthmus collateralis and retrosplenic cortex. In four cases no unequivocal structural basis for the amnesia was found--except slight numerical atrophy of large neurons of the nucleus basalis Meynerti. No significant diencephalic pathology was found. Severe "binswanger-like" changes were found in two cases of amnesia and in one case of control group, all of them were hypertonics. There exists a possibility that a part of "isolated" and relatively "benign" amnestic defects in old people is not a result of the aging of the brain but a sign of evolution of Alzheimer's disease and/or ischaemic vascular lesion of the brain destroying or disconnecting some of its information bottlenecks.
Koukolík
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Oddĕlení patologie fakultní Thomayerovy nemocnice, Praha.
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000473:pathology; D000647:Amnesia / Q000209:etiology / Q000473:pathology*; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male
Neuropatologie amnestického syndromu ve stárí.