Torpedoes in Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, essential tremor, and control brains
Louis ED et al. – Although Purkinje cell axonal swellings (torpedoes) are increased in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD), as well as cerebellar essential tremor (ET), the magnitude of increase in cerebellar ET is greater and cannot be accounted for by concomitant AD or PD pathology. Methods- Study to quantify torpedoes in PD and AD vs ET and control brains
- Brains: 40 ET cases (34 cerebellar ET, 6 Lewy body variant of ET) and age-matched comparison brains (21 AD, 14 PD/diffuse Lewy body disease, 25 controls)
- Torpedoes counted in 20 × 25 mm stained cerebellar cortical sections
Results- Median number of torpedoes in cerebellar ET (12) was 12× higher vs controls (1) and ~2.5× higher than in AD (5) or PD/DLBD (5)
- In logistic regression adjusted for age and Alzheimer's-type changes, each torpedo more than doubled the odds of having cerebellar ET
- This finding indicated that association between increased torpedoes and cerebellar ET was independent of AD-type changes
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