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Neuritic and Diffuse Plaque Associations with Memory in Non-Cognitively Impaired Elderly

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Malek-Ahmadi, Michael, Perez, Sylvia E., Chen, Kewei, Mufson, Elliott J.·2016·Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease
DOI 10.3233/jad-160365PMC PMC6314669
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Abstract

The presence of Alzheimer's disease (AD)-related neuropathology among cognitively normal individuals has been well documented. It has been proposed that these individuals may represent a pre-clinical AD population. Previous studies have demonstrated a negative association between the presence of both amyloid-β (Aβ) plaques and neurofibrillary tangles with ante-mortem cognitive performance, a relationship which is likely influenced by a number of factors including age and APOE ɛ4 carrier status. The present study determined whether the presence of neuritic plaques (NPs) and diffuse plaques (DPs) are associated with performance in a number of cognitive domains after accounting for APOE ɛ4 carrier status and neurofibrillary tangle presence in a cohort of 123 older participants from the Rush Religious Order Study who died with a premortem clinical diagnosis of no cognitive impairment (NCI). After adjusting for age at death, education, gender, Braak stage, and APOE ɛ4 carrier status, the presence of NPs was associated with lower performance in the cognitive domains of Global Cognition (p = 0.002), Episodic Memory (p = 0.03), Semantic Memory (p = 0.009), and Visuospatial performance (p = 0.006), while DPs showed no association with any cognitive domain examined. These results suggest that decreases in cognition in elderly NCI individuals are associated with an increase in NPs and not DPs when age at death, education, gender, APOE ɛ4 status, and Braak stage are taken into consideration.

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  • Neuritic plaques with dense amyloid and tau-positive neurites are believed to be closely associated with neuronal loss and cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease.

    “Most importantly the neuritic plaques with dense amyloid and tau-positive neurites are believed to be closely associated with neuronal loss and cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease [37, 38].”

    From The neuropathological diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (2019) · cites this paper as [37]

    The Discussion (page not provided) describes neuritic plaques as containing extracellular amyloid-β and tau and associates them with poorer cognition; it also reports a stronger cognitive association for neuritic than diffuse plaques. It does not establish that the plaques contain *dense* amyloid or that they are closely associated with neuronal loss. (LLM, conf=0.84)

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Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Malek-Ahmadi, M., Perez, S. E., Chen, K., & Mufson, E. J.
Affiliations
  • Banner Alzheimer’s Institute, Phoenix, AZ, USA
  • Barrow Neurological Institute (US)
  • Banner Alzheimer’s Institute (US)
Corresponding author
Mufson, Elliott J.
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2016-07-14
Volume
53
Issue
4
Pages
1641-1652
ISSN
  • 1387-2877 (ISSN-L)
  • 1875-8908
DOI
10.3233/jad-160365
PMC
PMC6314669
OpenAlex
W2472592786
Cited by
73
References
17
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 1
FWCI
6.81
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • Journal of Alzheimer s Disease (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
National Institute on Aging (P01AG014449, P30AG019610)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Alzheimer's disease research and treatments
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Complementary and alternative medicine › Medicinal Plants and Neuroprotection
Keywords
neuritic plaques, diffuse plaques
MeSH terms
Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Aging, Autopsy, Brain, Cognition Disorders, Female, Humans, Male, Memory, Mental Status Schedule, Neuropsychological Tests, Cohort Studies, Neurofibrillary Tangles, Apolipoprotein E4, Plaque, Amyloid, Memory, Episodic

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