Sharing of Specific Antigens by Degenerating Neurons in Pick's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract

NEUROPATHOLOGICAL studies during the past 15 years have established that dementia of the Alzheimer type, or Alzheimer's disease, is the most common cause of intellectual failure in the elderly, accounting for approximately 60 per cent of all cases of senile dementia.^{1 2 3} Alzheimer's disease is now believed to be the fourth or fifth most frequent cause of nonaccidental death in the United States.³ Pick's disease⁴ is a degenerative dementia that is much less common than Alzheimer's disease but is similarly characterized by massive accumulations of abnormal protein fibers in selected neurons.Pick's disease and Alzheimer's disease have classically been considered to . . .