An Autopsy Case of Alzheimer's Disease.

Kwon, Taejung; Wona, You Jin; Lee, Jong Seok; Ha, Hongil

Case Report

Korean Journal of Legal Medicine 2009;33(1):53-56.
Published online May 31, 2009.

An Autopsy Case of Alzheimer's Disease.

Taejung Kwon, You Jin Wona, Jong Seok Lee, Hongil Ha

Division of Forensic Medicine, National Institute of Scientific Investigation, Seoul, Korea. tjkwon@nisi.go.kr

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease is the leading cause of dementia. We experienced a case of Alzheimer's disease who is 83-year-old woman killed by stab with a knife. She had been suffered from dementia for several years. At autopsy, the brain disclosed cortical atrophy in the frontal, temporal and parietal lobes, and hippocampus. Microscopically, many senile plaques and a few neurofibrillary tangles were observed at the cerebral cortex and hippocampus. Senile plaques were characterized by a spherical structure with or without a dense central core of amyloid, associated with dystrophic neurites. Neurofibrillary tangle was an intracellular filamentous lesion in the cell body of neuron. To our knowledge, this is a rare autopsy case in Korea, therefore, we report here-in and review the clinicopathologic features of Alzheimer's disease.

Key Words: Alzheimer's disease, dementia, pathology