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Query: UMLS:C0042373 (vascular disease)
 17,070 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

A 54-year-old man who had cerebellar ataxia and pseudobulbar palsy at the age of 29 years, and soon developed dementia, myoclonus and convulsions, died after about 20 years in a vegetative state. Histological examination of the extensively atrophic and devastated brain (680 g) revealed the almost total loss of cerebral cortical neurons associated with numerous beta-protein amyloid plaques, many extracellular tangles and a large number of hypertrophic astrocytes, and prominent amyloid angiopathy. The astrocytes were frequently immunopositive for anti-human tau antibody (anti-htau) and anti-ubiquitin antibody (anti-ubi). Double immunostaining with anti-htau and anti-glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) antibody clearly demonstrated htau-positive domains within the GFAP-positive perikarya/and processes of several astrocytes. Electron microscopy of the hippocampal CA1, which was completely devoid of pyramidal neurons, revealed, in astrocytes, abnormal filaments indistinguishable from the paired helical filaments (PHFs) seen in neurons. On immunoelectron microscopy, the filaments were observed to be labeled with anti-htau and anti-ubi, exhibiting the same immunohistochemical features as neuronal PHFs. This is the first demonstration of clearly constricted and both tau- and ubiquitin-positive PHFs in astrocytes, indicating that, in some special conditions like in our case, processes similar to those that attack neurons also affect astrocytes and ultimately make the latter form PHFs.
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PMID:Paired helical filaments in astrocytes: electron microscopy and immunohistochemistry in a case of atypical Alzheimer's disease. 155 54

In a prospective longitudinal study with death as the end point in 17 middle-aged patients with Down's syndrome, dementia was clinically diagnosed in 15 patients, by means of careful observations in daily circumstances. Autopsies were performed in 10 cases: 8 demented patients and 2 nondemented patients. Neuropathologically, Alzheimer-type abnormalities were demonstrated in 9 patients, both demented and nondemented, and combined Alzheimer-type abnormalities with infarctions were demonstrated in 1 patient. In the 14 demented patients who did not show evidence of cerebrovascular or systemic vascular disease, dementia had an early onset and was rapidly progressive (mean age at onset, 51.3 years in the moderately retarded patients and 52.6 years in the severely retarded patients; mean duration of symptoms, respectively, 4.9 and 5.2 years). Cognitive and behavioral decline corresponded to symptoms of dementia of the Alzheimer's type in patients without Down's syndrome, but often were not recognized early. In the present group of patients, there was a remarkably high incidence of gait and speech deterioration. Also, the incidence of epileptic seizures and myoclonus was about eightfold, as compared with dementia of the Alzheimer's type in patients without Down's syndrome.
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PMID:The natural history of dementia in Down's syndrome. 213 13

We report the clinical and neuropathological manifestations of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in nine kindreds of German ancestry all originating from the same two adjacent villages on the West bank of the Volga River. There have been 89 known demented persons (53 male, 36 female). Mean age of onset is 57.6 +/- 8.4 years with a range of 40 to 84. Mean age at death is 66.5 +/- 7.6 years with a range of 50 to 80. Mean disease duration is 10.3 +/- 4.8 years with a range of 3 to 23. Detailed medical records were available on 50 individuals. Of these, 24% had a seizure, 72% language disturbance, 36% rigidity, 16% tremor and 12% myoclonus. There were 15 autopsies on demented persons from 6 of the kindreds. One brain suggested Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in a woman with the typical clinical course. The remaining 14 brains showed typical neuropathological characteristics of AD including neuritic amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, amyloid angiopathy and granulovacuolar change. Amyloid plaques were also seen in the cerebellum in all but one brain in which this region was available for review. Autopsy material from five brains in four families has been stained with antibody directed against the amyloid peptide; in all cases, the neuritic plaques stained positively. Many of the families share common surnames. It is likely that these Volga German kindreds carry the same genetic mutation leading to Alzheimer's disease; and thus, they are a valuable resource for genetic investigations of AD. Thus far, the disease in these kindreds does not show close linkage to either the D21S1 or beta amyloid gene loci on chromosome 21.
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PMID:Characteristics of familial Alzheimer's disease in nine kindreds of Volga German ancestry. 260 19

Pseudoxanthoma elasticum is a rare hereditary disorder of elastic tissue with central nervous system manifestations due to occlusive vascular disease and aneurysm formation. Here we report the first recorded case of an intracranial arteriovenous malformation (AVM) in a patient with pseudoxanthoma elasticum. The AVM, which was located in the pons, also had an unusual manifestation, namely palatal myoclonus.
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PMID:An intracranial arteriovenous malformation and palatal myoclonus related to pseudoxanthoma elasticum. 276 15

A case of familial juvenile Alzheimer's disease with apallic state at the relatively early stage and various neurological features was reported. A 33-year-old woman showed a progressive dementia followed by apallic state at the relatively early stage, and died of cardiac failure at the age of 45. Neurological examination disclosed chorea, myoclonus, rigidity, pyramidal sign, and generalized convulsion. Neuropathologically, extensive senile changes such as senile plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, and granurovascular degenerations were observed in the brain, chiefly in the cerebral cortex and limbic system. The present case was characterized by a severe neuronal loss in the subcortical gray matter such as the caudate nucleus, dentate nucleus, substantia nigra, and thalamus as well as a marked myelin loss and axonal damages in the cerebral white matter. This case suggested a combination of multisystemic degeneration and a primary degeneration of the cerebral white matter. The additional peculiar aspects in this case were the senile plaques and amyloid angiopathy in the cerebellar cortex, and the senile plaques and grumose degeneration in the cerebellar dentate nucleus. In the clinicopathological standpoint, the apallic state in this case could be attributed to a severe degeneration of the cerebral white matter in addition to the cerebral cortical deterioration. Furthermore, the occurrence of chorea and myclonus might be contributed to the severe degeneration of the caudate nucleus and to the degeneration of the dentate nucleus, particularly to the grumose degeneration, respectively.
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PMID:[A case of familial juvenile Alzheimer's disease with apallic state at the relatively early stage and various neurological features--a clinicopathological study]. 279 15

Choline acetyltransferase activity was measured postmortem in five brain regions to determine if such activity provided biochemical support for clinical and pathological subgrouping of Alzheimer's disease. Seven patients with Alzheimer's disease were divided into groups based on age at onset, severity of neuropathological changes, history of myoclonus, family history of dementia, cerebellar amyloid plaques, and congophilic angiopathy. Thirty-two age-matched normal control subjects and 17 neurological control patients with Huntington's disease were also studied. Patients with early-onset and late-onset Alzheimer's disease did not differ in the clinical duration of their disease. Choline acetyltransferase activity was significantly lower in patients with early-onset Alzheimer's disease than in age-matched control subjects in frontal cortex, temporal cortex, hippocampus, and cerebellum. In contrast, choline acetyltransferase activity in patients with late-onset Alzheimer's disease was significantly lower than in age-matched control subjects only in hippocampus. There was a tendency for choline acetyltransferase activity to be lower in cortex from patients with early-onset Alzheimer's disease compared with cortex from the late-onset group, and this difference was significant in temporal cortex. Choline acetyltransferase activity was also measured in the substantia innominata from 9 patients with Alzheimer's disease and 5 age-matched control subjects. Subjects with early-onset Alzheimer's disease had significantly lower choline acetyltransferase activity in substantia innominata than did control subjects. Patients with Alzheimer's disease and a history of myoclonus had significantly lower choline acetyltransferase activity than did affected patients without myoclonus. Multivariate regression analysis showed myoclonus to be the single best predictor of low brain choline acetyltransferase activity. These results provide further evidence for clinical, pathological, and biochemical heterogeneity in Alzheimer's disease.
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PMID:Alzheimer's disease: choline acetyltransferase activity in brain tissue from clinical and pathological subgroups. 622 76

Olivary pseudohypertrophy (OH) and its chronological change was examined by MR images in two patients with brainstem vascular disease. Patient 1 was a 63-year-old woman who developed an infarction in the red nuclei associated with "top of the basilar" syndrome. Two months later, she showed 2-4 c/s rhythmic myoclonus (rubral tremor) involving four extremities. Palatal myoclonus was absent. MR images of the inferior olives did not demonstrate a significant lesion in 10 days after the onset, but showed OH in 6 months, and then their size attained a maximum in 10 months after. On T2-weighted (T2) images and proton-density-weighted (PD) images obtained at 20 and 24 months, OH gradually became irregular but discrete in their intensity, and the intensity had also decreased to some extent. Rhythmic myoclonus had subsided to some extent after 20 to 24 months. Patient 2 was a 62-year-old woman who had a small hemorrhage in the pontine tegmentum. She developed 2.5 c/s vertical ocular myoclonus without palatal myoclonus two months after the onset. MR images showed OH in 6 and 8 months after the onset. On T2 and PD images obtained at 20 months, the image of OH gradually developed to become irregular in intensity and slightly atrophic in size. The ocular myoclonus somewhat reduced in their intensity 12 months after the onset. These serial changes in MR images were considered to correspond to the chronological changes of the pathology of OH. Appearance and subsidence of the myoclonic movement was also considered to correlate to the sequential changes of MR images of OH.
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PMID:[Chronological changes in MR imaging of inferior olivary pseudohypertrophy--report of two cases]. 789 37

We report the clinical and neuropathological features of chromosome 14-linked familial Alzheimer's disease (14qFAD) in affected members of the L family. Some clinical information on all 16 known affected individuals and detailed neuropathological findings in 6 family members were available for review. Common features of the phenotype of 14qFAD in the L family included onset of dementia before the age of 50, early progressive aphasia, early-appearing myoclonus and generalized seizures, paratonia, cortical atrophy, numerous and extensive senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, and prominent amyloid angiopathy. Descriptions of phenotypic features were available for six additional recently defined 14q-linked FAD kindreds: the findings in four of them (FAD4, FAD2, A, B) indicated a relatively consistently shared 14qFAD phenotype, conforming closely with the specific clinical and neuropathological characteristics noted in the L family. Comparisons also suggested several ostensible phenotypic variants in 14qFAD: (1) In two 14q-linked kindreds (SNW/FAD3, FAD1), affected individuals in some instances were noted to survive to age 70 or beyond and the mean age at onset (> 49 years) in these two kindreds was somewhat higher than in their five 14qFAD counterparts (< 48 years in each); (2) in the SNW/FAD3 kindred, seizures and myoclonus were absent in all 10 subjects examined; and (3) cerebellar amyloid plaques were variably present within and among several 14qFAD kindreds. Comparisons with phenotypic features recently detailed in three kindreds (TOR3, F19, ROM) with codon 717 amyloid precursor protein gene mutations (i.e., APP717 FAD) suggested several distinctions: Prominent progressive aphasia, myoclonus, seizures, and paratonia were all apparently less prevalent in APP717 FAD, with language function predominantly spared over the initial disease course. The extent of homogeneity and heterogeneity in the clinical and neuropathological phenotype of 14q-linked FAD and its possible meaningful distinctions from the phenotypes of APP717 FAD await further determination.
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PMID:Phenotype of chromosome 14-linked familial Alzheimer's disease in a large kindred. 808 Feb 40

Early onset Familial Alzheimer's Disease (FAD) is an autosomal dominant disease with apparent complete penetrance. It is genetically heterogeneous with some families carrying mutations in the amyloid precursor protein (APP) gene which segregate with the disease. In addition, there is allelic heterogeneity with four mutations associated with FAD. Three mutations have been reported at APP 717, just distal to the C-terminus of the beta-amyloid domain, APP 717 val-ile, APP 717 val-phe, and APP 717 val-gly, which are associated with autopsy-proven Alzheimer's disease (AD). APP 670/671 lies at the N terminus of the beta-amyloid domain and is associated with clinically diagnosed FAD in two Swedish families. FAD tends to have prominent myoclonus and this is shared by the cases with APP mutations. In two unrelated UK families with APP 717 val-ile mutations there was early prominent memory impairment with dyscalculia proceeding to generalized cognitive impairment with a lack of insight. There was a late development of a gait disturbance with extrapyramidal features in some members. Positron emission tomography (PET) with fluorodeoxyglucose demonstrated posterior bitemporal biparietal hypometabolism in one case. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed generalized cerebral atrophy particularly affecting the temporal lobes and hippocampus. At autopsy, a single case showed extensive beta-amyloid deposition with congophilic angiopathy and widespread senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. The cytoskeletal pathology associated with abnormally phosphorylated tau was similar to cases of sporadic AD. In addition, there were widespread cortical and subcortical Lewy bodies. A single family with the APP 717 val-gly mutation also showed prominent myoclonus, lack of insight, and seizures, PET, in a single case, showed classical biparietal bitemporal hypometabolism. Autopsy, in a single case, showed diffuse deposits of beta-amyloid throughout the cortex with frequent neuritic plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. No other inclusion bodies were seen. There was severe congophilic angiopathy. The age at onset of APP mutations is around 50 years of age by contrast to other early onset FAD pedigrees.
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PMID:Alzheimer's disease families with amyloid precursor protein mutations. 823 83

Some patients with familial Alzheimer's disease (FAD) have mutations in the presenilin-1 (PS-1) gene on chromosome 14. We report a Japanese family with AD and an Ala285Val substitution in exon 8 of the PS-1 gene. FAD in this family was characterized by relatively late onset (mean age, 50 years) and absence of myoclonus, seizures, or paratonia. Levels of tau were markedly elevated in CSF whereas CSF levels of amyloid beta protein were normal. MRI of the cranium showed marked linear signal abnormalities within white matter in the parieto-occipital lobes, consistent with cortical amyloid angiopathy of the type encountered in patients with the PS-1 gene mutation.
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PMID:A presenilin-1 mutation in a Japanese family with Alzheimer's disease and distinctive abnormalities on cranial MRI. 910 15


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