[Ultrastructural study of the neuronal lipofuscin--an autopsy case of familial Alzheimer's disease].

This work is to study the ultrastructure of the neuronal lipofuscin that occurred in the brain and the spinal cord of an autopsy case of familial Alzheimer's disease and to compare with those in several other diseases. The patient was a 46-year-old male, whose father and elder brother were diagnosed as Alzheimer's disease and died at the age of 42, respectively. He became afflicted with forgetfulness and disorientation at the age of 36. He developed a grand mal seizure at the age of 39 and thereafter, his clinical course was characterized by pyramidal signs, dysarthria and the symptoms of Gerstmann's syndrome, visuo-spatial agnosia, apraxia for dressing and constructive apraxia. He became bedridden at 45 years old and died of general prostration. The brain weighed 1,250 g, and the cerebral cortex showed mild atrophy. The neuronal loss, senile plaques and Alzheimer's neurofibrillary tangles were found throughout the cerebral cortex. The senile plaques were also found in the basal ganglia, the cerebellar medulla and cortex. There was severe amyloid angiopathy in the occipital and cerebellar cortices. The specimens for electron microscopy were taken from the cerebral cortex, the basal ganglia, the thalamus, the midbrain, the medulla oblongata, the cerebellum and the spinal cord. The ultrastructural study revealed three different types of the neuronal lipofuscin, though different stainability between these lipofuscin granules could not be manifested by several histochemical methods. Their morphological differences seemed to be based on the sites of the central nervous system.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)