Amyloid beta-peptide and the dementia of Parkinson's disease.
It is not known whether an increased incidence of dementia in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) is due to a higher incidence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) or to "early" Alzheimer-type pathology. To determine whether amyloid beta-peptide (A beta) of AD occurs more frequently in brains of patients with PD, we examined 50 cases and 79 controls by using histoblots for A beta. Twenty-three cases with PD had dementia, including all nine with A beta distributed throughout the entire cerebral cortex; three of these cases had AD. In contrast, five of 17 controls with comparable A beta accumulation were not demented. Neither AD nor A beta deposition was increased in PD, furthermore, there was no statistical correlation between the amount of A beta and the number of Lewy bodies in cerebral cortex. In 14 patients with PD in whom dementia was unrelated to A beta, there was cerebral vascular disease (four), numerous cortical Lewy bodies (three), or hydrocephalus (two); in five further cases, dementia was not well explained by histopathologic changes. Our data found no increase of either AD or "early" Alzheimer-type pathology in cases of PD; however, a synergistic effect between the two pathologies was suggested as contributing to dementia.
Department of Neurology, Charité, Berlin, Germany.
K
K
Jendroska
A J
AJ
Lees
W
W
Poewe
S E
SE
Daniel
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000473:pathology*; D016229:Amyloid beta-Peptides / Q000032:analysis*; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000473:pathology; D003704:Dementia / Q000473:pathology*; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D016631:Lewy Bodies / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016874:Neurofibrillary Tangles / Q000473:pathology; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000473:pathology*; D012016:Reference Values
D016229:Amyloid beta-Peptides