Familial prion disease with Alzheimer disease-like tau pathology and clinical phenotype.

Objective: To describe the Alzheimer disease (AD)-like clinical and pathological features, including marked neurofibrillary tangle (NFT) pathology, of a familial prion disease due to a rare nonsense mutation of the prion gene (PRNP).

Methods: Longitudinal clinical assessments were available for the proband and her mother. After death, both underwent neuropathological evaluation.

A novel X-linked four-repeat tauopathy with Parkinsonism and spasticity.

The parkinsonian syndromes comprise a highly heterogeneous group of disorders. Although 15 loci are linked to predominantly familial Parkinson's disease (PD), additional PD loci are likely to exist. We recently identified a multigenerational family of Danish and German descent in which five males in three generations presented with a unique syndrome characterized by parkinsonian features and variably penetrant spasticity for which X-linked disease transmission was strongly suggested (XPDS).

Tau isoform regulation is region- and cell-specific in mouse brain.

Tau is a microtubule-associated protein implicated in neurodegenerative tauopathies. Alternative splicing of the tau gene (MAPT) generates six tau isoforms, distinguishable by the exclusion or inclusion of a repeat region of exon 10, which are referred to as 3-repeat (3R) and 4-repeat (4R) tau, respectively. We developed transgenic mouse models that express the entire human MAPT gene in the presence and absence of the mouse Mapt gene and compared the expression and regulation of mouse and human tau isoforms during development and in the young adult.

Heterozygous parkin point mutations are as common in control subjects as in Parkinson's patients.

Objective: Homozygous or compound heterozygous parkin mutations cause juvenile parkinsonism. Heterozygous parkin mutations are also found in patients with typical Parkinson's disease (PD), but it is unclear whether a single "mutation" in a patient is related to disease or is coincidental, because the mutation frequency in control subjects is unknown. We present a comprehensive sequence analysis of parkin in control subjects.

High-density SNP haplotyping suggests altered regulation of tau gene expression in progressive supranuclear palsy.

Two extended haplotypes exist across the tau gene-H1 and H2-with H1 consistently associated with increased risk of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). Using 15 haplotype tagging SNPs (htSNPs), capturing >95% of MAPT haplotype diversity, we performed association analysis in a US sample of 274 predominantly pathologically confirmed PSP patients and 424 matched control individuals. We found that PSP risk is associated with one of two major ancestral H1 haplotypes, H1B, increasing from 14% in control individuals to 22% in PSP patients (P<0.

Parkin mutation dosage and the phenomenon of anticipation: a molecular genetic study of familial parkinsonism.

Background: parkin mutations are a common cause of parkinsonism. Possessing two parkin mutations leads to early-onset parkinsonism, while having one mutation may predispose to late-onset disease. This dosage pattern suggests that some parkin families should exhibit intergenerational variation in age at onset resembling anticipation.

An R5L tau mutation in a subject with a progressive supranuclear palsy phenotype.

MAPT, the gene encoding tau, was screened for mutations in 96 progressive supranuclear palsy subjects. A point mutation (R5L) was identified in a single progressive supranuclear palsy subject that was not in the other progressive supranuclear palsy subjects or in 96 controls. Functionally, this mutation alters the ability of tau to promote microtubule assembly.