Significant association of cadaveric dura mater grafting with subpial Aβ deposition and meningeal amyloid angiopathy

Excerpt

Recently, the possibility of human-to-human transmission of cerebral β-amyloidosis has been suggested in autopsy studies of patients with iatrogenic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) associated with human growth hormone injection or dura mater graft [1, 3, 4]. To evaluate the possibility of iatrogenic transmission of cerebral β-amyloidosis in humans via cadaveric dura mater graft, we performed immunohistochemical studies on 16 patients with dura mater graft-associated CJD (dCJD) and 21 patients with sporadic CJD (sCJD) using antibodies against prion protein (PrP), amyloid β-protein (Aβ), phosphorylated tau, phosphorylated α-synuclein, and phosphorylated transactive response DNA-binding protein-43 (TDP-43) (see supplementary methods). There were no significant differences between patients with dCJD and sCJD with respect to age at death [mean ± SD (range) years: 63.1 ± 14.1 (35–81) and 63.4 ± 10.8 (35–80), respectively], sex distribution, duration of CJD [months: 18.1 ± 8.8 (7–41) and 22.7 ± 13.9 (4–60), respectively], distribution of polymorphisms at codon 129 of PrP gene or in the apolipoprotein E gene, or PrP deposition score [6] (supplementary Table 1; supplementary Fig. 1). …