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Mean volume of pigmented neurons in the substantia nigra in Parkinson's disease
Author(s) -
Møller A.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
acta neurologica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.967
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1600-0404
pISSN - 0001-6314
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0404.1992.tb05036.x
Subject(s) - substantia nigra , stereology , parkinson's disease , neuromelanin , neuron , degenerative disease , pathology , medicine , anatomy , biology , disease , neuroscience
A new unbiased stereological estimator, the rotator, was used to estimate the mean volume of pigmented substantia nigra (SN) neurons in three Parkinson's disease (PD) brains and agematched controls. Average pigmented neuron volume was 31300 μm 3 (5200) in controls and 28900 μm 3 (120) in patients. Estimating the absolute size distribution, revealed that PD patients had ≈ 80% less total SN pigmented volume than controls. Compared with biased methods, in addition to dramatic improvements in efficiency and accuracy, results obtained by the unbiased rotator suggest that primarily the largest pigmented neurons in SN are lost in PD.