title: Enhanced production of amyloid precursor protein mRNA by peripheral mononuclear blood cell in Alzheimer's disease.
abstract: Previous studies have suggested the involvement of amyloid precursor protein (APP) in Alzheimer's disease (AD), as exons 16 and 17 of the APP gene mutations have been found in some familial AD patients. Furthermore, overexpression and deposition of the beta amyloid peptide, a proteolytic product of APP, have been considered as a pathological hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. Therefore, it is of particular interest to determine the expression of APP gene at the transcription level for better understanding of the roles of APP gene in AD pathogenesis. In this work, we employed the quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) to quantify APP mRNA transcripts in the peripheral mononuclear blood cells (PMBC) of 52 Alzheimer's patients, 28 vascular dementia (VD) patients, and 60 healthy elderly controls. The results showed that the amount (mean +/- SEM) of APP transcripts per microgram of total cDNA was 4.05 +/- 0.27, 2.73 +/- 0.33, and 2.59 +/- 0.27 amole in AD, VD, and healthy controls, respectively. There was a significant increase (P < 0.05) in the expression of APP mRNA transcripts in AD compared with that in VD or in healthy controls. Thus, our data indicated that variation of APP gene expression in PMBC might be a pathogenic source of Alzheimer's disease.
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Shanghai Institute of Mental Health, Shanghai 200030, People's Republic of China. jiangsanduo@163.com
authors.forename: Sanduo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Mingyuan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Daming
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.forename: Guomei
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Sicui
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Yiping
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Qian
authors.forename: Ye
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Kaida
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Fei
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Dongxiang
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000097:blood / Q000235:genetics*; D016564:Amyloid beta-Protein Precursor / Q000235:genetics*; D005260:Female; D015870:Gene Expression; D006801:Humans; D007963:Leukocytes, Mononuclear / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction
chemical_list: D016564:Amyloid beta-Protein Precursor; D012333:RNA, Messenger