Studies on choline transport enhancement into fibroblasts from normals and Alzheimer's donors.

Human dental fibroblasts transport choline actively. This transport is inhibitable by hemicholinium-3. In this paper, choline transport into fibroblasts of normal donors (four cell lines) and into those of Alzheimer victims (four cell lines, age and sex matched to the normals) is accelerated by methylated xanthines, nicotine, and dexamethasone. At a caffeine concentration of 10 microM the stimulation of choline transport into normal cells averages 128% and into Alzheimer donor cells, 45%. 1 microM Dexamethasone stimulates choline influx by 86% in normal cells and 36% in Alzheimer cells. Nicotine enhances choline transport by 35% in normal cells and by 16% in Alzheimer cells. The implication is that if Alzheimer's disease is a cholinergic disorder, it may be amenable to transport-directed chemotherapies.