Journal of pharmacological sciences
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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease of the brain associated with irreversible cognitive decline, memory impairment, and behavioral changes. Postmortem brains of AD patients reveal neuropathologic features, in particular the presence of senile plaques (SPs) and neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs), which contain β-amyloid peptides and highly phosphorylated tau proteins. Currently, AD can only be definitively confirmed by postmortem histopathologic examination of SPs and NFTs in the brain. ⋯ Several of the PET probes have been shown in clinical trials to be useful for the imaging of β-amyloid plaques in living brain tissue. More recently, the development of PET/SPECT probes for in vivo imaging of NFTs is an active area of study in the field of molecular imaging because the appearance of NFT pathology correlates well with clinical severity of dementia. We will review current research on the development of PET/SPECT imaging probes for in vivo detection of SPs and NFTs and their application to diagnosis and therapy of AD.
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Pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD) include senile plaques, neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs), synaptic loss, and neurodegeneration. Senile plaques are composed of amyloid-β (Aβ) and are surrounded by microglia, a primary immune effector cell in the central nervous system. NFTs are formed by the intraneuronal accumulation of hyperphosphorylated tau, and progressive synaptic and neuronal losses closely correlate with cognitive deficits in AD. ⋯ Although details of the interaction between AD pathologies remain unclear, experimental evidences to discuss this issue have been accumulated. In this paper, we review and discuss recent findings that link the AD pathologies to each other. Further studies on the interaction between pathologies induced in AD brain may contribute to provide deep insight into the pathogenesis of AD and to develop novel therapeutic, prophylactic, and early diagnostic strategies for AD.