Apoptosis in neuronal cell death of neurodegenerative disorders.

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The cause and mechanism of neuronal cell death in the substantia nigra of patients with Parkinson disease (PD) is unknown and there is controversy whether apoptosis play a role in the neuronal death in PD.We investigated apoptotic-like body in the substantia nigra of PD, and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) using In situ end labeling method on the substantia nigra of the postmortem brain. Apoptotic-like bodies were seen in the brains of the control , PD and PSP.There were no correlation between the number of apoptotic-like bodies and age at death or the postmortem time. The mean number of apoptotic-like bodies were not significantly different between control, PD and PSP.In addition, the inimunohistochemistry against ss-DNA, which are thought as early marker of the apoptosis, showed no significant difference between PD and control in the number of ss-DNA positive neurons.However, the immunohistochemistry for the Bcl-2 family showed the proportion of Bcl-xL-positive neurons was significantly lower in PD than control, although the proportions of Bcl-2 and Bax-positive neurons were not different between PD and control. Reduced expression of Bcl-xL may play a role in the vulnerability of the neurons in the substantia nigra of PD.