Paul Coleman on Mitochondrial DNA mutations in Alzheimer's disease.

COMMENT An important area with a number of findings of uncertain value. A recent paper in PNAS (Hirano et al., 1997, 94:14894-14899) indicates that some of the mt mutations previously described may be due to PCR amplification of nuclear mt DNA pseudogenes ...

Edward Koo on Nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs and the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

COMMENT Nice study, but confirmatory nonetheless. edkoo 0 ...

Nikolaos K. Robakis on A protein kinase, PKN, accumulates in Alzheimer neurofibrillary tangles and associated endoplasmic reticulum-derived vesicles and phosphorylates tau protein.

COMMENT Kinases that phosphorylate tau are of great interest for AD as tau hyperphosphorylation is a key pathological event in this disease. nikos.robakis 0 ...

Paul Coleman on Cytoarchitectonic alterations in the supramarginal gyrus of late onset Alzheimer's disease.

COMMENT One of the first papers showing clearly, with an excellent approach, what was expected: there is a relationship between the presence of tangles and neuronal loss. Also, cognitive impairment is better correlated with the density of tangles than with the ...

Benjamin Wolozin on Reduction of Abeta accumulation in the Tg2576 animal model of Alzheimer's disease after oral administration of the phosphatidyl-inositol kinase inhibitor wortmannin.

COMMENT Wortmannin is too toxic to be used as a therapeutic, but the idea of using such inhibitors is important to be aware of. bwolozin 0 ...

Elliott Mufson on Aluminum concentrations in drinking water and risk of Alzheimer's disease.

COMMENT Interesting. emufson 0 ...

Hiroshi Mori on Immunohistochemical localization of neprilysin in the human cerebral cortex: inverse association with vulnerability to amyloid beta-protein (Abeta) deposition.

COMMENT This provides histochemical evidence to support a role of the neprilysin in amyloidogenesis of AD brain. The immunoreactive intensity was not strong but favors its pathological involvement. mori 0 ...

Edward Koo on APP transgenic mice Tg2576 accumulate Abeta peptides that are distinct from the chemically modified and insoluble peptides deposited in Alzheimer's disease senile plaques.

COMMENT Nice study to define differences in amyloid biochemistry in different transgenic mice vs. humans edkoo 0 ...

Andre Delacourte on Neurogenic phenotypes and altered Notch processing in Drosophila Presenilin mutants.

COMMENT A turning point in the molecular history of neurodegenerative disorders. andre.delacourte 0 ...

Carl Cotman on Frontal behavioral inventory: diagnostic criteria for frontal lobe dementia.

COMMENT Interesting cwcotman 0 ...

Paul Coleman on Validation of the cerebellum as a reference region for SPECT quantification in patients suffering from dementia of the Alzheimer type.

COMMENT This study suggests that 'with the use of HMPAO SPECT in DAT patients the cerebellum remains scintigraphically uninvolved.' This is finding has added interest in view of the fact that the cerebellum in DAT exhibits diffuse plaques as well as ...

Peter Davies on DNA replication precedes neuronal cell death in Alzheimer's disease.

COMMENT This paper from Karl Herrup and colleagues is really fantastic. I saw some of the data in Washington, and realized that this was an extremely well done and important experiment. It appeares to show that neurons in the AD brain have at least attempted to ...

Paul Coleman on Combination of the different biological markers for increasing specificity of in vivo Alzheimer's testing.

COMMENT The suggestion of using multiple markers has merit. Paul_Coleman 0 ...

Benjamin Wolozin on Determinants of 4-repeat tau expression. Coordination between enhancing and inhibitory splicing sequences for exon 10 inclusion.

COMMENT This represents a novel look at Tau regulation and sets the stage for regulating the number of repeats in tau (which affects its tendency to aggregate) bwolozin 0 ...

Paul Coleman on Neuronal DNA damage precedes tangle formation and is associated with up-regulation of nitrotyrosine in Alzheimer's disease brain.

COMMENT These data are consistent with other data (e.g. from Brad Hyman lab) suggesting that neuron death exceeds the number of NFT. Paul_Coleman 0 ...