FAMILIAL ALZHEIMERS-DISEASE AND CORTICAL LEWY BODIES - IS THERE A GENETIC SUSCEPTIBILITY FACTOR

The reason for the occurrence of Lewy body disease (LBD) in Alzheimer' s disease (AD) patients in unknown. If brains from etiologically diffe rent AD groups differ in their tendency to develop cortical Lewy bodie s, the concurrence of LED in AD patients may be a manifestation of the AD process in specific AD subsets. To address this issue, we counted cortical Lewy bodies in AD patients with genetic abnormalities on chro mosome 14 (n = 19), and chromosome 21 (n = 3), sporadic AD (n = 27), D own's syndrome (n = 1) and control (n = 26) patients. Cortical Lewy bo dies were occasionally present in AD patients with long-duration disea se in most of the above AD subgroups, but were not present in any of o ur age-matched control cases. We suggest that cortical Lewy body forma tion may be an intrinsic part of the late pathologic changes of AD reg ardless of etiology and that it is not specific to any of the AD subty pes studied.