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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

histological validation, Alzheimer's Disease, cerebrovascular disease, imaging biomarkers

College

Life Sciences

Department

Physiology and Developmental Biology

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze spatial co-localizations between amyloid beta (Aβ), tau, and iron in postmortem brains of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and cerebrovascular disease (CVD) patients. Iron is readily visible in T2* magnetic resonance images (MRI), and has been shown to be spatially correlated with Aβ plaques in AD. Neurofibrillary tangles of tau protein are also associated with AD, and Aβ plaques are also found in the walls of the vessels in CVD. If iron co-localizes with Aβ, then the location of the iron—parenchyma vs. sulci—as seen in MRI could reveal if the disease is possibly AD or CVD, respectively. Hence, MRI could be used in the future as a tool for earlier diagnosis of either disease. We have imaged stains of iron, Aβ, and tau in hippocampus sections of 8 different brains, and we are using Adobe Photoshop and OlyVia (image analysis software) to create digital images of iron’s co-localization with Aβ and tau. While CVD samples have yet to show a clear correlation, preliminary results indicate that iron does indeed co-localize with both Aβ and tau aggregations in AD samples.

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