DISTRIBUTION OF TANGLES AND THREADS IN THE CEREBRAL-CORTEX IN PROGRESSIVE SUPRANUCLEAR PALSY

Recent studies have described silver- and tau-positive glia and thread s in the degenerating lesions of progressive supranuclear palsy. In th is study, Gallyas-Braak silver impregnation and several immunohistoche mical techniques were employed to examine the distribution of tangles, abnormal glia and threads in the cerebral cortex of nine cases of pro gressive supranuclear palsy, In addition to neurofibrillary tangles, a rgentophilic glia and threads were impregnated exclusively by Gallyas- Braak technique, This technique demonstrated two types of glia profile s: tightly coiled intra-cytoplasmic profiles surrounding nuclei (coile d profiles) and thorn-like profiles with radial ramifications (thorn-l ike profiles), Thorn-like profiles are possibly in astrocytes and were detected in the cerebral cortex, while coiled profiles are possibly i n oligodendroglia and were detected both in the cerebral cortex and su bcortical white matter. Topographically, many neurofibrillary tangles were constantly seen in the frontal cortex and in the pre-central gyru s. Numerous neurofibrillary tangles were detected in the entorhinal co rtex of the two brains, Argentophilic glia and threads were also frequ ent both in the frontal cortex and the precentral gyrus; however, they were more frequent in the pre-central gyrus that in the frontal corte x in four of the eight cases examined, In two brains, argentophilic th reads were distributed widely in the cerebral cortex and white matter except for the temporal cortex. In immunohistochemical studies, argent ophilic glia and threads were mostly positive for Tau 2, and a small n umber of them were weakly positive for ubiquitin and paired helical fi lament protein, The immunoproperties of these abnormal glia and thread s seemed to be virtually identical to those of neurofibrillary tangles . These findings indicate that cytoskeletal abnormalities related with abnormal tau proteins may occur concordantly both in neuronal and gli al cells, especially in the pre-central gyrus, Cytoskeletal abnormalit ies occurring in the subcortical nuclei may be involved in the primary motor cortex.