CHOLINERGIC ACTIVITY AND AMYLOID PRECURSOR PROTEIN-METABOLISM

With more than 4 million Alzheimer's victims nationwide, there is inte nse research to elucidate the relationship among the hallmarks of the disease, amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, and degeneration of the basal forebrain cholinergic neurons. There has been much debate a bout which of these is the primary lesion, and which develops secondar ily. The correlation between plaques and tangles and dementia is not a bsolute, but a consistent feature of Alzheimer's disease is loss of co rtical and hippocampal cholinergic function as a result of basal foreb rain compromise. Additionally, factors associated with the cholinergic system have been shown to influence the processing and metabolism of the amyloid precursor, a protein that contains the amyloidogenic seque nce found in plaques. In this paper, the relationship between choliner gic compromise and amyloid deposition, as well as the cholinergic syst em-associated factors which appear to participate in amyloid precursor protein processing, are discussed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.