A disorganized increase of galanin-like immunoreactivity in cerebral cortex of Alzheimer-type dementia brains.

Galanin (GAL), a neuropeptide which has been reported to inhibit the evoked release of acetylcholine, is widely distributed in the mammalian central nervous system. In the present study, GAL-like immunoreactivity (LI) was measured in the cerebral cortex of autopsy brains of patients with the Alzheimer-type dementia and controls using an enzyme immunoassay technique. GAL-LI tended to be increased in the ATD brains and the difference was statistically significant in the frontal cortex. Moreover, although significant correlations of GAL-LI between regions of the cerebral cortex were found in the control brains, no such correlations were found in the ATD brains. These findings suggest a disorganized increase in GAL-LI in the cortex of ATD brains.