Table 1. Collected specimens from cases of AD, DS and controls.
| Subjects (males/females) | |||||||
| Group | Cryopreserved Cortex | Paraffined hippocampus | Cryopreserved hippocampus | Total subjects | Mean age ± SEM | Anatomopathologic diagnosis | Clinical diagnosis |
| DS | 5 (3/2) | 7 (3/4) | 4 (2/2) | 7 (3/4) | 56 ± 4.31 | AD V-VI, CERAD C | Dementia |
| AD | 5 (2/3) | 7 (4/3) | 5 (2/3) | 7 (4/3) | 80.7 ± 3.00 | AD V-VI, CERAD B-C | Dementia |
| Control | 6 (4/2) | 7 (5/2) | 5 (4/1) | 7 (5/2) | 69.7 ± 4.79 | Without neurological lesions (5) | Cognitively healthy |
| Frontotemporal degeneration (1) | FTD | ||||||
| iLBD; incidental Lewy body disease (1) | Cognitively healthy | ||||||
Note: For immunohistochemical and immunofluorescence analysis, 5 μm thin paraffin sections of hippocampus were available for all human brain samples, while 14 μm thin sections of frozen hippocampus were available for just 19 cases to analyse the intracellular cholesterol levels by immunofluorescence. On the other hand, cryopreserved human cortex of just 16 donors were available to assess gene expression and western blotting analysis. FTD, frontotemporal dementia.