Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most prevalent type of dementia which has been affected to more the 44 million people globally. It is distinguished by gradually deteriorating memory and other cognitive abilities that precede dementia. Present treatment of AD mainly focuses on symptomatic slowing the evolution of the disease which is associated with numerous side effects such as dizziness, tiredness, nausea, vomiting, heart attack, and stroke etc.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD) consist of beta-amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in affected brain areas. The processes, which drive this host reaction are unknown. To determine whether an analogous host reaction to that occurring in AD could be induced by infectious agents, we exposed mammalian glial and neuronal cells in vitro to Borrelia burgdorferi spirochetes and to the inflammatory bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe cause, or causes, of the vast majority of Alzheimer's disease cases are unknown. A number of contributing factors have been postulated, including infection. It has long been known that the spirochete Treponema pallidum, which is the infective agent for syphilis, can in its late stages cause dementia, chronic inflammation, cortical atrophy and amyloid deposition.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Purpose: The watershed cortical areas are the first to be deprived of sufficient blood flow in the event of cerebral hypoperfusion and will be the sites of watershed microinfarcts. Cerebral hypoperfusion is associated with Alzheimer disease (AD), but information regarding the occurrence of watershed cortical infarcts in AD is lacking.
Methods: Brains of 184 autopsy cases (105 definite AD cases and 79 age-matched controls) were selected and analyzed by histochemical and immunohistochemical techniques.
Among the most specific markers of the blood-brain barrier phenotype of endothelial cells are the well-characterized immunoglobulin-like surface glycoprotein HT7 and the probably related or identical glycoprotein neurothelin. Both can be induced in chorioallantoic vessels by transplants of embryonic mouse brain. Other blood-brain barrier markers have been shown to be inducible by type-1 astrocytes in endothelial cells of non-neural origin.
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