Unchanged amounts of vasopressin mRNA in the supraoptic and paraventricular nucleus during aging and in Alzheimer's disease.

The paraventricular (PVN) and supraoptic nucleus (SON) demonstrate a striking stability with respect to cell numbers during aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Vasopressin (AVP) neurons even become activated during aging as judged from several parameters for neuronal activity, such as increased AVP plasma levels, enlarged nucleolar as well as cell size and an increased size of the Golgi apparatus in AVP-neurons. The activation possibly occurs as compensation for an age-related loss of AVP-receptors in the kidney. As a specific marker for AVP synthesis, we used quantitative in situ hybridization and estimated total amounts of AVP-mRNA in the entire SON and PVN of 14 control subjects and 14 AD patients that were matched for age, fixation time, postmortem delay and storage time of the tissue in paraffin. Following quantification, no differences were observed in total amounts of AVP-mRNA in the SON or PVN between young and old controls or between young and old AD patients, nor between the entire group of controls and AD patients. A significant negative correlation was found between the volume of the AVP-mRNA signal in the AD SON and age while the total amount of mRNA remained the same. This suggests a redistribution of cells or cell compartments in aging. A significant positive relation in both SON and PVN of AD patients was found between storage time of the paraffin-embedded tissue and the total amount of AVP-mRNA. A significant positive relation was present in the PVN, but not SON between pH of the cerebrospinal fluid, which is a marker for agonal state and the total amount of AVP mRNA. The present unchanged AVP-mRNA levels in SON and PVN confirm earlier observations on the stability of cell numbers in these nuclei in aging and AD. Although on the basis of other parameters, AVP-mRNA upregulation was expected, gradual, chronic stimulation over prolonged periods of time may, possibly, induce alternative mechanisms of regulation such as changes in translatability or in mRNA stability.