Besides amyloid fibrils, pores (APs) represent another mechanism of induced toxicity. Since hypothesis put forward by Arispe and collegues in 1993 that amyloid-beta makes ion-conducting channels Alzheimer's disease may be due to the toxic effect these channels, many studies have confirmed APs are formed prefibrillar oligomers amyloidogenic proteins a common source cytotoxicity. The pore formati...

Amyloid is a systemic disease characterized by extracellular deposition of misfolded protein. Gastrointestinal and peritoneal light chain (AL) amyloid an under-recognized manifestation this disease, usually as late sequela. Here we present case recently diagnosed AL that presented in the context recurrent, acute onset abdominal discomfort was found to have bowel obstruction complicated perforat...

We fractionated frontal cortical grey matter from human Alzheimer's disease and control subjects into four biochemically defined pools that represent four distinct compartments: soluble/cytosolic, peripheral membrane/vesicular cargo, integral lipid/membranous pools and aggregated/insoluble debris. Most of the readily extractable amyloid-β remains associated with a lipid/membranous compartment. ...

Soluble β-amyloid has been shown to regulate presynaptic Ca(2+) and synaptic plasticity. In particular, picomolar β-amyloid was found to have an agonist-like action on presynaptic nicotinic receptors and to augment long-term potentiation (LTP) in a manner dependent upon nicotinic receptors. Here, we report that a functional N-terminal domain exists within β-amyloid for its agonist-like activity...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Cerebral amyloid angiopathy Type 1 is characterized by amyloid β protein deposition along cerebral capillaries and is accompanied by perivascular neuroinflammation and accumulation of phospho-tau protein. Tg-SwDI mice recapitulate capillary amyloid deposition and associated neuroinflammation but lack accumulation of perivascular phospho-tau protein. METHODS Tg-SwDI mice...

Islet amyloid and beta cell death in type 2 diabetes are heterogeneous events, where some islets are affected early in the disease process, whereas others remain visibly unaffected. This study investigated the possibility that inter-islet functional and vascular differences may explain the propensity for amyloid accumulation in certain islets. Highly blood-perfused islets were identified by mic...

Amyloidosis constitutes a spectrum of diseases, unified by the morphological appearance of the amyloid protein deposits, the cardinal feature of this disorder. The term “amyloid” was first coined in 1838 to describe plant starch and was adopted by Rudolph Virchow in 1854 to describe amyloid deposits in tissues, because of its similarity to cellulose stained with iodine. Amyloidosis results from...

Islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP) is responsible for amyloid deposition in type 2 diabetes and plays an important role in the loss of β-cell mass associated with the disease and in the failure of islet transplants, but the mechanism of islet amyloid formation is not understood. The incorrect processing of proIAPP to produce partially processed forms of the peptide has been proposed to play a rol...

The amyloid-β peptide is considered as a key player in the development and progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Although good evidence exists that amyloid-β accumulates inside cells, intracellular brain amyloid-binding proteins remain poorly characterized. Proteomic profiling of rat brain homogenates, performed in this study, resulted in identification of 89 individual intracellular amyloid...

Background: Amyloidosis refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders associated with the deposition of chemically distinct amyloid fibril proteins. Precise determination of chemical amyloid type has diagnostic, therapeutic, and prognostic relevance. Although immunohistochemical techniques are used routinely to determine the amyloid type, the results can be negative or inconclusive, so that bioc...