The AMY antigen co-occurs with abeta and follows its deposition in the amyloid plaques of Alzheimer's disease and down syndrome.

Novel plaque-like "AMY" lesions were recently described in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Using three Abeta antibodies, we now document the co-occurrence of AMY immunoreactivity (IR) with amyloid beta-peptide (Abeta) in the large majority of plaques in AD brain. AMY IR was detected in many compacted plaques, whereas its co-localization with early, diffuse Abeta deposits was rare. AMY IR overlapped considerably or fully with Abeta and, in more severely affected AD brains, decorated the periphery of some plaques. In a temporal series of 29 Down syndrome (DS) brains from patients aged 12 to 73 years, the earliest AMY IR was detected in some plaques at age 15, following the earliest appearance of Abeta plaques (age 12 years), and then accrued within a subset of Abeta deposits, namely, the more spherical, compacted plaques. Brains from DS patients 29 years and older showed AMY staining in many Abeta plaques, as seen in AD. Brains from eight monkeys aged 17 to 34 years and thirty APP transgenic mice aged 8 to 20 months showed Abeta IR but no AMY IR. We conclude that AMY IR represents an amyloid-associated antigen that co-deposits in most but not all Abeta plaques in AD and DS and that accumulation of the AMY antigen follows Abeta deposition in plaques.