Relationship between microtubule-binding repeats and morphology of neurofibrillary tangle in Alzheimer's disease.
OBJECTIVE
The present study was performed to compare the distributions of three-repeat (3R) and four-repeat (4R) neurofibrillary tangles (NFT) with those of pretangles (p-NFT), intracellular NFT (i-NFT), and extracellular NFT (e-NFT) in the hippocampus of Alzheimer's disease brains.


METHODS
NFT labeling was performed using anti-tau antibodies: pSer262 for p-NFT, pSer422 for i-NFT, AT8 for e-NFT, RD3 for 3R, and RD4 for 4R tau, and Gallyas impregnation for the NFT population. RD4- and pSer422-positive NFT were detected predominantly in sectors from CA2 to CA4, while RD3- and pSer262-positive NFT were predominantly present in CA1, the entorhinal cortex, and the subiculum. The tau epitope recognized by pSer262 belongs to 4R tau but it showed a strong correlation with RD3- and AT8-positive NFT.


CONCLUSIONS
Sectors CA2-CA4 showed predominantly 4R-NFT containing the pSer422 epitope. pSer262 may detect the process of transformation from p-NFT to i-NFT, and e-NFT consisted predominantly of 3R tau.
Kitamura
T
T
Ishikawa Prefectural Takamatsu Hospital, Uchi-takamatsu, Kahoku, Ishikawa-ken, Japan.
Sugimori
K
K
Sudo
S
S
Kobayashi
K
K
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000473:pathology*; D001665:Binding Sites / Q000235:genetics*; D018728:Entorhinal Cortex / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats / Q000235:genetics; D008870:Microtubules / Q000235:genetics*; D008875:Middle Aged; D016874:Neurofibrillary Tangles / Q000235:genetics / Q000473:pathology*; D009454:Neurofibrils / Q000235:genetics*; D012091:Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid / Q000235:genetics*; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D018911:Trinucleotide Repeats / Q000235:genetics; D016875:tau Proteins / Q000235:genetics
D016875:tau Proteins