Abstract
Neurofibrillary tangles are a prominent feature in the pyramidal cells of the hippocampus and in neurones of the cerebral cortex of people suffering from senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT)1. Similar neuronal changes also occur in elderly Down's syndrome patients and to a lesser degree in intellectually normal old people2. The tangles are composed of bundles of paired helically twisted 10–13 nm filaments (PHF)3,4, which may be either neurofilaments3 or microtubules5. Attempts to isolate tangles from postmortem material have met with some success6 but there is disagreement over the molecular weight (Mr) of presumptive PHF proteins enriched in these fractions, with conflicting claims of 50,000 (refs 6,7) and 20,000 (ref. 8). Initially it seemed that the 50,000-Mr putative PHF protein and tubulin cross-react9,10 but this result may have been a serological artefact, due to tangle-associated material in preparations of microtubule proteins used as immunogen and as test antigen11. We have used monoclonal antibodies to show here that neurofilament antigens are present in neurofibrillary tangles.
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Anderton, B., Breinburg, D., Downes, M. et al. Monoclonal antibodies show that neurofibrillary tangles and neurofilaments share antigenic determinants. Nature 298, 84–86 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1038/298084a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/298084a0
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