McKenzie J E, Roberts G W, Royston M C
Department of Psychiatry, Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School, London.
Neurodegeneration. 1996 Sep;5(3):259-64. doi: 10.1006/neur.1996.0034.
Neurofibrillary lesions such as neurofibrillary tangles, neurites and neuropil threads are used as neuropathological markers of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However these lesions are also seen in non-demented elderly cases as well as in several other disorders such as Down's syndrome (DS), dementia pugilistica (DP) and Parkinson's disease. Quantitative studies may therefore help in understanding the pathophysiological role of these lesions. Using a novel image analysis technique we have quantified the extent of neurofibrillary damage in AD, DS and DP. We have found that the extent of neurofibrillary change did not significantly differ between AD and DS, though there were also strong parallels between AD and DP. We conclude that both genetic (as in DS) and environmental (as in DP) risk factors for AD-type pathology provide a similar pattern of neurofibrillary degeneration to that in AD itself suggesting that similar degenerative mechanisms might be triggered in all three conditions.
神经纤维病变，如神经原纤维缠结、神经突和神经毡丝，被用作阿尔茨海默病（AD）的神经病理学标志物。然而，这些病变在非痴呆老年病例以及其他几种疾病中也可见，如唐氏综合征（DS）、拳击性痴呆（DP）和帕金森病。因此，定量研究可能有助于理解这些病变的病理生理作用。我们使用一种新颖的图像分析技术，对AD、DS和DP中的神经纤维损伤程度进行了量化。我们发现，AD和DS之间神经纤维变化的程度没有显著差异，尽管AD和DP之间也有很强的相似之处。我们得出结论，AD型病理学的遗传风险因素（如在DS中）和环境风险因素（如在DP中）都提供了与AD本身相似的神经纤维变性模式，这表明在所有这三种情况下可能触发了相似的退行性机制。
