An immunohistochemical study of the distribution of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in the adult human brain, with particular reference to Alzheimer's disease
Section snippets
Brain samples and tissue preparation
Experiments were performed on post mortem brain tissue from four subjects with no known history of neurological or psychiatric illness and three patients with clinical and neuropathological diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Neuropathological diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease was based on the high density of silver-impregnated senile plaques[10]observed in the temporal and frontal cortices and the low density of acetylcholinesterase histochemical staining in the ventral striatum.[51]Clinical and
Specificity of the antiserum
As reported for rat brain, BDNF immunoreactivity is widely expressed throughout the human CNS (Table 2, Table 3). Preabsorption of anti-BDNF antibodies with rhBDNF abolished staining in sections of the hippocampus (Fig. 1C) and claustrum (not shown). Omission of the primary antibodies resulted in an absence of labeling of CNS structures with the exception of cerebellar granule cells, which showed a slight non-specific immunoreactivity (Fig. 6B).
The antibody was further characterized by
Discussion
To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive immunohistochemical study on the distribution of BDNF in the human brain. Our main findings can be summarized as follows: (i) as reported for other mammals, BDNF is widely expressed in the normal adult human brain; (ii) BDNF immunoreactivity was observed in the cytoplasm of neuronal cell bodies and proximal dendrites, axons and nerve terminals; (iii) BDNF immunoreactivity was also present in glial cells and processes; (iv) BDNF-immunoreactive
Conclusion
This study demonstrates a widespread expression of BDNF in the adult human brain, thus suggesting that it has important functions beyond the period of development and early postnatal growth. In addition to extending previous animal findings to humans, we have provided new details on the localization of BDNF, such as the presence of BDNF-containing axons in the neuropile of most cholinergic nuclei, preferential labeling of striosomes in the striatum and glial immunostaining. A detailed knowledge
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by grants from INSERM and CNRS (France), and Fundación Antorchas of Argentina (GM). We are indebted to Nick Barton for revising the manuscript.
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