Neuropathology of neurodegenerative diseases Flashcards
What is the main type of methods to look at pathology?
Histochemical staining of tissue or immunohisochemical staining of the tissue
What does the formaline do to the tissue?
It fixates it and cross-linkes antigens, blocking epitopes
When doing immunohistochemistry, what is one of the first things you need to do?
Antigen retrieval (reverses the crosslinkenks caused by the formaline fixation)
Have monoclonal or polyclonal best specificity or sensitivity respectively?
Monoclonal: high specificity
Polyclonal: high sensitivity
Name three types of Amyloid beta pathology that can be observed in the brain?
- dense plaques
- amyloid Angiopathy
- diffuse plaques
- neuritic plaque
How does AB spread through anatomical areas?
- cortical areas
- limbic structures
- subcortical gray matter
- Mesencephalon and brainstem
- Cerebellum
what is the normal function of tau?
it is a microtubule associated protein which are important for structural stabilization, axonal transport and neurotransmisson
Name three types of taupathology that can be observed in the brain? (not only in AD)
- neurofibrillary tangles
- neuritic threads
- pick bodies (Picks disease)
How does tau spread through anatomical areas in AD?
I-II: entorhinal cortex
III-IV: limbic allocortex and adjoining neocortex
V-VI: Neocortical areas
What is braak staging and thal phases respectivly?
Braak staging stages the spread of the tau
Thal phases stages the spread of the amyloid beta
name three types of alpha synuclein pathology that can be observed in the brain?
- grain-like cytoplasmic structures
- Intracytoplasmic Lewy body like inclusions (Lewy bodies?)
- Neurites (Lewy neurites)
How do alpha synuclein in Parkinsons disease ascend through different brain areas?
from the brainstem to limbic structures to neocortex
What is the normal function of TDP43?
it is a nuclear protein which bind to DNA. It is related to RNA binding and involved in RNA-splicing. It is also involved in gene expression regulation
