Nicotinic and muscarinic binding sites on lymphocytes from Alzheimer patients

Abstract

There is growing evidence that Alzheimer’s disease(AD/SDAT) is a generalized disease not only confined to the brain. One way to further strengthen this assumption might be to study peripheral blood cells such as lymphocytes which have nicotinic and muscarinic like binding sites. The presence of muscarinic binding sites on intact lymphocytes(Gordon et al, 1978; Zalcman et al, 1981; Strom et al, 1981; Adem et al, 1984) as well as in lymphocyte membrane fractions has been described (Adem et al,1984). Nicotinic binding sites on lymphocytes were inferred from functional studies(Richman et al, 1979). Evidence for the presence of nicotinic binding sites on intact living lymphocytes as well as lymphocyte membrane preparation was, recently, obtained in our laboratory. In this study we present a comparison of nicotinic and muscarinic binding sites of lymphocytes as well as plasma cholinesterase activity in Alzheimer patients and age matched controls.KeywordsAlzheimer PatientMuscarinic ReceptorMembrane FractionSenile DementiaCholinesterase ActivityThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.