Transmission of amyloid β protein

Tsuyoshi Hamaguchi, Masahito Yamada

Department of Neurology and Neurobiology of Aging, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Sciences

Prion diseases are fatal neurodegenerative diseases associated with the deposition of abnormal prion protein (PrP^Sc) in the brain, and they can be transmitted among different individuals. Deposition of amyloid β protein (Aβ) in the brain (cerebral β-amyloidosis) is an early and invariant neuropathological feature of Alzheimer's disease. Recently, there have been increasing numbers of evidence that cerebral β-amyloidosis could be transmitted between individuals under experimental settings. Furthermore, several pathological studies revealed possible human-to-human transmission of cerebral β-amyloidosis via medical procedures including cadaveric human growth hormone injection and cadaveric dura mater grafting. In this review, we show recent advances on transmission of cerebral β-amyloidosis.

Address correspondence to Dr. Tsuyoshi Hamaguchi, Department of Neurology and Neurobiology of Aging, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Sciences (13-1 Takara-machi, Kanazawa 920-8641, Japan)