Pathology of the vessels in cerebral amyloid angiopathy.

We review here current data on congophilic amyloid angiopathy (congophilic angiopathy) or cerebral amyloid angiopathy in both transmissible and non-transmissible cerebral amyloidoses. A beta peptide is the amyloid in congophilic angiopathy of Alzheimer's disease, and in majority of cases of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease and Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker disease. A variant of Cystatin C is the amyloid in hereditary cerebral hemorrhage with amyloidosis-Icelandic type. The only exception is a curious GSS-like family from Japan characterized by 145 stop codon at the PRNP gene. Both molecular pathology and neuropathology are covered by this review.