This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (22)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Aging/ Geriatrics  • Neurology  • Alzheimer Disease  • Dementias  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Peter Davies, PhD

JAMA. 1999;281:1433-1434.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The idea that some of the symptoms of Alzheimer disease are due to a deficiency of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the brain first surfaced in 1976 and 1977.^1-3 Several groups of investigators reported that the activity of enzymes involved in the synthesis (choline acetyltransferase [ChAT]) and degradation (acetylcholinesterase [AChE]) of acetylcholine were markedly reduced in activity in autopsy brain tissue from patients with end-stage Alzheimer disease, and many subsequent studies have confirmed these findings. A few groups have reported deficits in ChAT activity or acetylcholine release in biopsy tissue from living patients with Alzheimer disease⁴ and several reports have shown that the extent of the deficits in autopsy brain tissue correlate with the severity of the disease (as determined by the density of neuritic plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, or both). The cholinergic hypothesis⁵ of Alzheimer disease that evolved from these studies simply postulates that at least some of . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Author Affiliation: Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLE

Cholinergic Markers in Elderly Patients With Early Signs of Alzheimer Disease
Kenneth L. Davis, Richard C. Mohs, Deborah Marin, Dushyant P. Purohit, Daniel P. Perl, Melinda Lantz, Gregory Austin, and Vahram Haroutunian
JAMA. 1999;281(15):1401-1406.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Septohippocampal Acetylcholine: Involved in but not Necessary for Learning and Memory?
Parent and Baxter
Learn. Mem. 2004;11:9-20.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Neuropharmacology and Receptor Studies in the Elderly
Meltzer
J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol 1999;12:137-149.
ABSTRACT