Examination of Cholinergic and Neuropeptide Receptor Alterations in Senile Dementia of the Alzheimer’s Type (SDAT)

Abstract

Senile dementia of the Alzheimer’s type (SDAT) is a progressive cerebral neurodegeneration which is known to affect approximately 5% of the population over age 65 in every industrialized country. SDAT patients show correlative changes in various physiological, morphological, biochemical and clinical parameters. In recent years, a number of biochemical studies have attempted to define neurochemical changes which occur during SDAT. The characteristics of a number of neurotransmitter systems have been investigated (Terry and Davies, 1980) and changes in the number of receptors (Reisine et al., 1978), transmitter synthesizing enzyme activities (Perry et al., 1978) and transmitter levels (Richter et al., 1980) have already been demonstrated. Since changes in the cholinergic and some neuropeptide transmitter systems (Rossor et al., 1982; Davies et al., 1982) have been reported in brain tissue of patients with this disorder, we decided to simultaneously characterize biochemical markers for the cholinergic system (choline acetyltransferase (CAT, EC 2.3.1.6), muscarinic acetylcholine receptor (mAChR) and to investigate the possible changes in the somatostatin, delta and mu opiate receptor systems.