Neuropathological definition of Alzheimer disease: multivariate analyses in the morphometric distinction between Alzheimer dementia and normal aging.
Although establishing that a patient is suffering from dementia of the Alzheimer type initially reflects a clinician's opinion, neuropathological study is for the present the most definitive examination to confirm the clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer disease. We review several comprehensive publications attempting on a quantitative basis to differentiate the changes occurring with normal aging of the human brain from those indicative of Alzheimer disease. New morphometric data on 5 histopathological lesions in the mesial temporal cortex of 42 subjects indicate that, when multivariate analyses are performed on such microscopic information, a diagnostic prediction about the brain of any unknown individual should indeed be possible with a statistically calculated degree of certainty.
Ball
M J
MJ
Department of Pathology, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.
Griffin-Brooks
S
S
MacGregor
J A
JA
Nagy
B
B
Ojalvo-Rose
E
E
Fewster
P H
PH
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000473:pathology*; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology*; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology*; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged