Study title and authors:
Aneuploidy in the normal, Alzheimer's disease and ataxia-telangiectasia brain: differential expression and pathological meaning.
Iourov IY, Vorsanova SG, Liehr T, Yurov YB.
National Research Center of Mental Health, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Moscow, Russia.ivan_iourov@yahoo.com
This paper can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19344645
Aneuploid cells have an abnormal number of chromosomes and may form because of a shortage of cholesterol
. See here.The study measured the number of aneuploid cells in the brains of people with:
(a) No disease
(b) Alzheimer's disease
(c) Ataxia Telangiectasia
The study revealed that:
(1) The overall proportion of aneuploid cells in the normal brain is approximately 10%.
(2) The overall proportion of aneuploid cells in the brain of ataxia telangiectasia individuals was estimated at approximately 20-50%.
(3) A dramatic 10-fold increase of chromosome 21-specific aneuploidy was detected in individuals with Alzheimer's disease.
Iourov concluded that neural aneuploidy to be a feature of neurodegenerative diseases.