Alzheimer's disease and Alzheimer-type of cerebral degenerations in Chinese.

The incidence of Alzheimer's disease has been suggested to be low in Chinese but there have been few histological studies of the disease and of Alzheimer-related changes in Chinese. In this study, brains from 8 cases of Alzheimer's disease and 27 non-demented elderly Chinese individuals were examined comprehensively. Dementia was excluded in the latter by careful retrospective interviews with relatives. Histological sections were taken from standardised areas and quantitative analysis of neuritic plaques, neurofibrillary tangles and diffuse plaques was carried out with 3 histological methods: microwave modification of Bielschowsky, Bodian and beta A4 protein immunostaining. There were conspicuous differences in the amounts of neurofibrillary tangles and neuritic plaques seen between the demented and non-demented groups. In the latter, the amount of Alzheimer-related changes appeared to be much smaller than in corresponding studies among Western populations. Diffuse plaques were not found to be a good histological marker for dementia.