The combination of silver techniques for studying the pathology of Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's diseaseis a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, which implicates the whole central nervous system. The hallmarks of the disease are the development of neuritic plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, the accumulation of beta-amyloid in the cytoplasm of the neurons (soluble beta-amyloid oligomers) and the neuropile space (insoluble amyloidal fibrils), the neuronal loss, and the devastating synaptic alterations. Despite the fact that for the identification of the plaques and tangles and for the detection of the amyloid deposits and the neuronal loss, there are specific techniques even in light microscopy, synaptic pathology can be studied only with electron microscopy or indirectly with immunohistochemistry, because several alterations in the density of proteins located in synaptic junction (drebrin, synapsin, synaptophisin) may be occurring. Thus, this article presents original Nauta method impregnating degenerating axons as well as axonic terminals in post-mortem material derived from patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Furthermore, the article proposes its application in combination with Golgi method and Gallyas technique for a spheroid view of the neuronal degeneration and synaptic pathology in the study of any brain region in Alzheimer's disease.