George Martin on Chlamydia pneumoniae induces Alzheimer-like amyloid plaques in brains of BALB/c mice.

COMMENT It is always interesting to see which few of the tens of thousands of weekly science publications catch the eyes of the clever journalists who review these developments for The Economist. The current (March 20-26 2004) issue featured (and cited) the Littl

Bruce Lamb on Genetic dissection of complex traits with chromosome substitution strains of mice.

COMMENT Disclaimer: Bruce Lamb is assistant professor in the department chaired by senior author Joseph Nadeau. The development of the chromosome substitution strains (CSSs) is truly a unique resource to study any number of quantitative traits that differ between

Andre Delacourte on Soluble amyloid beta-protein is increased in frontotemporal dementia with tau gene mutations.

COMMENT An important result, if confirmed. One more example that tau and Abeta work together? 0 andre.delacourte

John Breitner on Plasma levels of beta-amyloid(1-40), beta-amyloid(1-42), and total beta-amyloid remain unaffected in adult patients with hypercholesterolemia after treatment with statins.

COMMENT The paper suggests that statin treatment (simvastatain and atorvastatin) has no major effect on plasma Aβ levels, as detected by ELISA. What does this mean? First, it is not clear that plasma Aβ levels are a useful index of AD pathology. CSF Aβ levels cou

Martin Citron on Follow the Leader to Higher BACE Levels

COMMENT Over the last two years, several studies have suggested that levels of BACE1 protein are elevated in sporadic Alzheimer’s disease brains (1-4). It is not completely clear if the elevation of BACE1 protein is accompanied by an elevation in BACE1 message (a

Junchao Tong on Loss of Parkin in Mammals Takes Steam Out of Mitochondria

COMMENT The paper did not discuss the current limitation of proteome technology. Isn't it a coincidence that the proteins identified in this paper are mostly from mitochondria while most of the identifiable proteins on a 2D PAGE are also metabolism enzymes (

Paul Coleman on The facial nerve axotomy model.

COMMENT This is a nice model that we have recently used to distinguish young and aged glial responses to N VII axotomy. The advantage of this model is that there is no surgical disruption of the local vascular system. 0 Paul_Coleman Facial nerve axotomy in aged a

Paul Coleman on Neural cell adhesion molecule in human serum. Increased levels in dementia of the Alzheimer type.

COMMENT I hope the authors discuss in the full paper the relationship of their data to data on plasticity and synapse-associated molecules in AD. 0 Paul_Coleman

Paul Coleman on Normal induction but accelerated decay of LTP in APP + PS1 transgenic mice.

COMMENT These data are reminiscent of data produced many years ago by Carol Barnes showing reduced ability of old rats to potentiate LTP on successive days. 0 Paul_Coleman

Beka Solomon on Primate Model Promising for Studying Aβ Vaccine

COMMENT This paper deals with immunization of healthy old monkeys with fibrillar Aβ42. These animals showed age-related cerebral amyloidosis but no Alzheimer's disease pathology (1) like plaques and gliosis. I wonder if vaccination of healthy old monkeys cou

Dave Morgan on Primate Model Promising for Studying Aβ Vaccine

COMMENT This paper shows that immunization of aged monkeys against the Aβ peptide produces measurable antibody titers and sizeable increases in circulating Aβ levels. These data are consistent with the argument that anti-Aβ immunotherapy may reduce brain amyloid

Jacob Raber on Better Model Links Polyglutamine Disease to Growth Factor VEGF

COMMENT In an elegant study, Sopher et al. generated and analyzed transgenic mice that express yeast artificial chromosomes carrying the human androgen receptor (AR) with either 20 (AR20) or 100 (AR100) CAGs. In this model, human AR is expressed between 30 and 10

Mark Cookson on Loss of Parkin in Mammals Takes Steam Out of Mitochondria

COMMENT This is a great paper. The parkin mice were surprisingly phenotype-free, which seemed a nuisance, but may actually be helpful in this model, as Shen and her colleagues were able to look at proteome differences in the absence of changes in cell number. Fro

Fred Van Leuven on MARK Homologue Sparks Tau Terror in Fruit Fly

COMMENT This excellent paper draws renewed attention to the (other) central problem in neurodegeneration in general and AD in particular: How does the tau pathology originate? This essentially boils down to the question of what is the initial kinase, i.e., the ki

Vincent Mauro on Follow the Leader to Higher BACE Levels

COMMENT Response to comment by Daniele Zacchetti In a recent posting, Daniele Zacchetti and colleagues