Cell volume of neocortical neurons from patients with Alzheimer's disease

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Abstract

The unbiased estimation of total neuron number in neocortices of five patients, age range 79 to 88 yrs with Alzheimer's disease was compared with total neocortical neuron number in four non-demented controls, age range 70 to 101 yrs. The demented patients were from a longitudinal study on Alzheimer's disease from Johns Hopkins University Hospital (JHUH) in Baltimore, USA. The total nerve cell number in the Alzheimer group was 19.7-109 with a coefficient of variation (CV) = 0.17, while total neuron number in the control group was 18.6-109, CV = 0.08, the difference of 6 percent is obviously not significant. Each sampled neocortical neuron was measured in a semiautomatic procedure using the menu-driven computer program CAST-GRID (Olympus, Denmark). The rotator, the unbiased stereological principle by which an estimate of the volume of an object can be obtained by rotating a 3-D object around an axis in the plane, was used to obtain a unbiased estimate of the mean cell volume and size distribution of neocortical neurons.

We found a statistically significant increase in the size of the neuronal nuclei in neocortices from patients with Alzheimer's disease from JHUH: 351 µm3 (CV = = 0.07) vs. 287 µm3 (CV = 0.17), an increase of 22% over Danish controls, 2p = 0.047, whereas the five percent increase in neuron perikaryon volume from 1146 um3 (CV = 0.11) in controls to 1197 µm3 (CV = 0.13) in the Alzheimer cases was not statistically significant.

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A propos de : Mads J. Bundgaard

A propos de : Lisbeth Regeur

A propos de : Juan Troncoso

A propos de : Mark J. West

A propos de : Bente Pakkenberg