Deficiency of a neuronal growth-sustaining factor in fibroblasts of patients with Alzheimer's disease.

A previous report has shown a deficiency of a cholinergic differentiating factor in spent culture media in which Alzheimer's disease (AD) patient fibroblasts were grown (Kessler, 1987). We used a similar approach to investigate whether AD fibroblast-conditioned medium demonstrated central nervous system (CNS) neuronal growth sustaining properties. For these investigations we used cultured fetal murine telencephalic vesicle neurons. Control fibroblast-conditioned medium produced statistically significant neuronal survival as compared to AD fibroblast-conditioned medium or to nonconditioned medium. There was no statistically significant difference between AD fibroblast-conditioned medium and nonconditioned medium results. These results suggest that there may be a deficiency in AD of a CNS neuronal growth-sustaining factor.