Relationships between choline acetyl-transferase and muscarinic binding in aging rodent brain and in Alzheimers disease

This paper examines how the relation between ChAT and muscarinic binding might be affected by aging in mouse and rat brains. Preliminary data are presented regarding this relation in postmortem cerebral cortex samples from human subjects who died with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and from age-matched controls. The effect of acetyl coenzme A (1- C 14-acetyl coenzyme A concentration on enzyme activity was determined by varying the concentration of the coenzyme in the assay medium. Assays of muscarinic binding were performed on tissue sonicates diluted with Tris-HC1 buffer using tritium-quinuclidinyl benzilate tritium-QNB as the ligand. For brain regions obtained from rats, significance of age differences were assessed by one-way analysis of variance and Bonferroni t statistics. Differences in ChAT activity and binding site density from human postmortem samples between diagnostic groups were assessed separately by region using an analysis of covariance