Spinal cord neurofibrillary pathology in Alzheimer disease and Guam parkinsonism-dementia complex

We examined spinal cords of neurodegenerative disease patients and controls living on the Island of Guam and in the continental United States. These patients had pathologically confirmed parkinsonism dementia-complex (PDC) with or without amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Alzheimer disease (AD), respectively. Nearly all of the spinal cords examined from both groups of patients contained neurofibrillary tangles (NFT). The immunohistochemical profile of these NFTs indicates that they are composed of hyperphosphorylated tau protein like their counterparts in the brains of these patients. Western blot analysis confirmed this by revealing that sarcosyl insoluble tau in spinal cord extracts from patients with NFTs exhibited the presence of all 6 tau isoforms similar to that from AD and ALS/PDC cortical gray matter.