Affiliations: [a] CNR-Institute for Biomedical Technologies, Metalloproteins Unit, Department of Biology, University of Padua, Italy | [b] Pathology Division and Brain Bank, General Hospital, Dolo-Venice, Italy | [c] CNR-Institute for Biomedical Technologies, Milan, Italy
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Paolo Zatta, CNR-ITB, Department of Biology, University of Padua, 35121 Padua, Italy. Tel.: +390498276331; Fax: +390498276330; E-mail: zatta@mail.bio.unipd.it.
Abstract: Frontotemporal dementia regards a group of presenile progressive neurodegenerative form of dementias which includes Pick's disease, corticobasal degeneration, frontotemporal dementia with motor neuron disease, frontal lobe degeneration, dementia-parkinsonism-amyotrophy complex, familial non-specific dementia mapping to chromosome 3, non-Alzheimer degenerative dementia lacking distinctive histological features as well as a number other infrequent syndromes with dementia and focal neurological signs. The aim of this study was to investigate the regional distribution of metallothionein-I-II, an ubiquitary group of buffering proteins, in cases of frontotemporal dementia. The aim of the present study was to study the metallothionein-I-II expression in relationship to the expression in astrocytes of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) as we have already done in previous studies of Alzheimer's and Binswanger's diseases [31,32]. Our findings indicate that metallothionein-I-II expression in the most affected areas is likely to be regionally distinct and layer-dependent, in that it is highest in the deep layers of the frontotemporal cortex and the allocortex (hippocampus) while insignificantly immunopositive in the occipital cortex. In addition, the potential use of metallothionein-I-II as a new pharmacological approach to contrast some deleterious aspects of this disease has been also discussed.
