Pathological lesions of Alzheimer's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies brains exhibit immunoreactivity to an ATPase that is a regulatory subunit of the 26S proteasome.

MS73 is one of a family of ATPases that act as regulatory subunits of the 26S proteasome. Localisation of this ATPase in histological sections of hippocampus from Alzheimer's disease (AD) and in cingulate gyrus sections of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) brains was examined immunohistochemically. In all cases of AD (n = 10) neurofibrillary tangles (NFT), plaque neurites and neuropil threads were immunoreactive for MS73. In seven out of the nine cases of DLB, distinctive MS73-positive structures were detected within cortical Lewy bodies. The association of MS73 with these neuronal abnormalities provides further evidence that proteolytic processing involving the 26S proteasome occurs in lesions of AD and DLB.