Reactive glia not only associates with plaques but also parallels tangles in Alzheimer's disease.

摘要

Senile plaques are a prominent pathological feature of Alzheimer's disease (AD), but little is understood about the association of glial cells with plaques or about the dynamics of glial responses through the disease course. We investigated the progression of reactive glial cells and their relationship with AD pathological hallmarks to test whether glial cells are linked only to amyloid deposits or also to tangle deposition, thus integrating both lesions as a marker of disease severity. We conducted a quantitative stereology-based post-mortem study on the temporal neocortex of 15 control subjects without dementia and 91 patients with AD, including measures of amyloid load, neurofibrillary tangles, reactive astrocytes, and activated microglia. We also addressed the progression of glial responses in the vicinity (