title: Antibodies to human brain spectrin in Alzheimer's disease.
abstract: We investigated the existence of antibodies in sera of Alzheimer's disease patients which immunoreact with specific antigens from crude human brain extracts. We found that 49% of patients, per only 5% of control subjects, had increased levels of antibodies to a 240 kDa protein. On the basis of immunological criteria and internal amino acid sequencing, this antigen was identified as brain spectrin, a cytoskeletal protein which appears to be implicated in synaptic plasticity. Our data raises the possibility that anti-spectrin antibodies could be implicated in Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis.
authors.affiliation: Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochod Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Cantoblanco, Spain. jvazquez@mvax.cbm.uam.es
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Vázquez
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fernández-Shaw
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Marina
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Haas
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cacabelos
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Valdivieso
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000276:immunology*; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000918:Antibody Specificity; D015153:Blotting, Western; D001923:Brain Chemistry / Q000276:immunology*; D002457:Cell Extracts / Q000276:immunology; D003599:Cytoskeleton / Q000276:immunology; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D013049:Spectrin / Q000737:chemistry / Q000276:immunology*
chemical_list: D002457:Cell Extracts; D013049:Spectrin