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Letters to Nature

Nature 337, 736-739 (23 February 1989) | doi:10.1038/337736a0; Received 9 October 1988; Accepted 10 January 1989

Pathological changes in olfactory neurons in patients with Alzheimer's disease

Barbara R. Talamo, RuthAnn Rudel, Kenneth S. Kosik*, Virginia M.-Y. Lee†, Samuel Neff, Lester Adelman & John S. Kauer

  1. Neurosciences Laboratories and Departments of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Pathology, Tufts Medical School and New England Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts 02111, USA
  2. * Center for Neurologic Diseases, Harvard Medical School, Boston,Massachusetts 02115, USA
  3. † Department of Pathology and Laboratory of Medicine,University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA
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Alzheimer's disease is a central nervous system disorder characterized by the presence of neurofibrillary tangles, neuritic plaques and dystrophic neurites1 in susceptible areas of the brain. Investigation of the mechanism and development of the disease has been hampered by the lack of an animal model and the inaccessibility of neural tissue during the illness. Deficits in odour detection and discrimination are among the signs of Alzheimer's2 and previous anatomical studies suggest that olfactory pathways may be involved early in the illness3. Neurons in the olfactory epithelium, which are of central origin, are relatively accessible for biopsy4 and could be used as a source of living nerve cells for the study of Alzheimer's disease if they can be shown to have characteristics of this disease. As these neurons have the unusual property of arising from stem cells throughout the life of the organism5, they are good candidates for the development of cell cultures or cell lines which may express the disorder from living patients. We report here that nasal epithelium tissue taken at autopsy shows unique pathological changes in morphology, distribution and immunoreactivity of neuronal structures in patients with Alzheimer's disease.