Clinical and Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology, November 1998, p. 888-893, Vol. 5, No. 6
1071-412X/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Department of Microbiology,
Received 10 March 1998/Returned for modification 22 April
1998/Accepted 13 August 1998
To confirm or refute the proposed link between nocardiae and
Parkinson's disease (PD), we investigated the presence of acid-fast spherical structures similar to filterable nocardiae at the midbrain nigral lesions of three patients with PD. Many clusters of acid-fast lipochrome bodies were dense around blood vessels in the two patients with Hoehn and Yahr stage II and III PD. These clusters were present in
the vicinity of melanin-pigmented neurons in the three PD patients studied. Examination of adjacent hematoxylin-and-eosin-stained sections
indicated that they consisted of yellow-green granules, bodies, and
aggregates in ballooned glial cells. On the other hand, no clusters of
acid-fast lipochrome bodies were observed at the compacta region of
three control patients. Our results suggest that the immunological and
genetic relationship between the acid-fast lipochrome bodies and
filterable nocardiae should be investigated.
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Microbiology, Gifu University School of Medicine, Tsukasa-machi 40, Gifu City, Gifu 500-8076, Japan. Phone: 81-582-65-1241. Fax:
81-582-67-0156.
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