Alzheimer's disease brain extract stimulates the survival of cerebral cortical neurons from neonatal rats.

Department of Clinical Pathology, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, Japan.

Cell cultures of neonatal rat cerebral cortex in a serum-free medium were used to investigate a lack of neuronotrophic factors in Alzheimer's disease (AD) brain. A few neurons survived in the absence of brain extract. The addition of normal brain extract resulted in a 2.5-fold increase in neuronal survival. AD brain extract contained 4-fold neuronotrophic activity of normal brain extract. These findings are in contrary to the previous hypothesis of a lacking neuronotrophic factors in AD brain. These new results may change the concept of mechanism of neuronal death in AD.

PMID: 3342070 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]