The Brain Bank Core Resource will provide complete brain banking and neuropathology diagnostic services for all participants within the AHERF Institute on Aging. Autopsied brain material will be collected under the direction of a board-certified neuropathologist from hospitals located on the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia campuses of the Medical College of Pennsylvania/Hahnemann University. The brain will be bisected sagitally at the time of autopsy. The right half will be dissected for flash-frozen banking and distribution to participating investigators. The left half of the brain will be fixed in buffered formalin. Sections from the cerebral cortex and white matter, hippocampus, basal ganglia, cerebellum, brain stem, and spinal cord will be embedded in paraffin for microscopic examination. Paraffin sections will be routinely stained with hematoxylin and eosin. Special stains may include the Luxol fast blue periodic acid Schiff stain, the Bielschowsky silver stain, a trichrome stain, and a number of immunocytochemical stains (e.g., GFAP, beta A4, PHF). In addition to the differential diagnostics for neurodegenerative diseases, those brains found to possess changes of Alzheimer's disease will be staged according to published criteria of tangle densities. The brain bank will be catalogued and correlated with neuropathology diagnoses to make available well characterized tissues to participating AHERF investigators. Neuropathology diagnoses will be supplied to an AHERF Institute on Aging database. Based upon the analysis of autopsy reports from the past 2 years we can anticipate approximately 80 brains per year from adults with medical and surgical illnesses and no history of dementia or other complicating neurologic disease. Of those 80 brains per year approximately one-half will most likely be autopsied within 12 hours of death. Importantly, our retrospective analyses indicate that we should expect brains from adults ranging in age from more than 20-100 years of age. The availability of brain material from patients representing each decade of life provides a valuable resource to address aged-related questions. With the initiation of the Brain Bank Core Resource these control brains, as well as those with the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, will be banked and characterized by routine gross and microscopic neuropathologic examination. In addition, the core will maintain a reference laboratory for development of detailed and quantitative analyses.
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