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Immunoreactivity for Bcl‐2 and C‐Jun/AP1 in hippocampal corpora amylacea after ischaemia in humans
Author(s) -
Botez G.,
Rami A.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
neuropathology and applied neurobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.538
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1365-2990
pISSN - 0305-1846
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2990.2001.00362.x
Subject(s) - dentate gyrus , hippocampal formation , proinflammatory cytokine , hippocampus , biology , immunohistochemistry , context (archaeology) , pathology , neuroscience , medicine , inflammation , immunology , paleontology
Corpora amylacea (CAm) are regarded as a hallmark of brain ageing, but little is known about their role in normal and pathological circumstances. CAm contain, in addition to glucose polymers, ageing‐, stress‐ and proinflammatory proteins. In view of their almost universal occurrence and their cumulation with time, formation of CAm may represent a basic mechanism for the management of metabolic degradation products. In this context, we studied samples from post‐mortem cases with repetitive brain hypoxic episodes in the past history. We investigated, by immunohistochemistry, the presence of Bcl‐2, c‐jun and bax in CAm. CAm showed immunoreactivity for the mitochondrial membrane associated protein Bcl‐2, and for the major component of activator protein 1 transcriptional factor c‐Jun. We found higher numbers of CAm in the hippocampus and the dentate gyrus in cases with repetitive cerebral hypoxia than in controls. We conclude that: (1) the presence of C‐Jun and Bcl‐2 within the glucose polymer mass of CAm may be related to mitochondrial damage and/or a transient overload of proteolytic systems during cellular injury; and (2) repetitive cellular stress during life may cause the age‐related increase of CAm in elderly subjects.