Caspase-cleavage of tau is an early event in Alzheimer disease tangle pathology
J. Clin. Invest. Robert A. Rissman, et al. 114:121 doi:10.1172/JCI20640 [
Go to this article.]
Figure 3ΔTau is found predominantly within AD brain and is inversely correlated with cognitive function. Large numbers of ΔTau-immunoreactive neurons (red) were observed in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex of AD brains (
A). In contrast, only occasional ΔTau-immunoreactive cells were observed in age-matched control cases (
B). Preadsorption of the α-ΔTau antibody with immunizing peptide resulted in no immunofluorescence (
A, inset). Regression analysis of the number of hippocampal CA1 cells labeled with α-ΔTau versus AD Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores revealed a significant inverse correlation between ΔTau and cognitive function (
P = 0.05,
r2 = –0.72; (
C). High-power confocal microscopy demonstrated distinct subcellular localization of ΔTau (red) and the C-terminal–specific antibody T46 (green) within cell bodies (
D) and dystrophic neurites (
E). Scale bar: 65 μm (
A and
B), 8 μm (
D), 5 μm (
E).
