Immunohistoblot analysis on whole human hemispheres from normal and Alzheimer diseased brains

We demonstrate the feasibility and usefulness of the histoblot immunostaining of cryosections of whole hemispheres of healthy and Alzheimer diseased (AD) human brains by localizing a neuron-specific marker, the anti-neuronal nuclei (NeuN) antigen. As expected, cortical NeuN-immunopositive regions were generally thinner and lighter in the AD brains than in the controls. The advantages of using whole hemisphere histoblots: (1) they provide a low-resolution overview/outline of the antigen distribution in a large surface area, (2) large, thick, and/or unfixed tissue sections from post-mortem samples (perhaps of inferior tissue quality) can be compared, and (3) subsequent immunohistochemistry can be performed on the tissue sections used for the histoblots.