Intraneuronal and extracellular neurofibrillary tangles exhibit mutually exclusive cytoskeletal antigens.

We examined the possibility that neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) were heterogeneous in postmortem hippocampus from 22 patients with or without senile dementia of the Alzheimer type. Intraneuronal NFTs and extracellular, or "ghost," NFTs were recognized in situ by only one or the other of two monoclonal antibodies. The first monoclonal antibody, RMO87, stained only intraneuronal NFTs and is specific for phosphate-dependent epitopes in tau and the two high molecular weight neurofilament proteins. The second monoclonal antibody, 2.2B10, is specific for glial fibrillary acidic protein, and it stained only the RMO87-negative extracellular NFTs. Treatment of sections with alkaline phosphatase or sodium dodecyl sulfate, and the isolation of NFTs from hippocampus, did not expose RMO87 binding sites in extracellular NFTs. These observations indicate that neurofilament-like and tau-like epitopes can be lost from NFTs in situ, and that at least two populations of morphologically and immunochemically distinct NFTs exist.