Formic acid is essential for immunohistochemical detection of aggregated intraneuronal Abeta peptides in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease.

The staining protocols so far applied to study intracellular Abeta accumulation in human tissue have been inconsistent with varying use of heat and formic acid (FA) for antigen retrieval. Microwave heat treatment has been reported to enhance the staining of intraneuronal Abeta as compared to no or enzymatic pretreatment. FA is widely used to increase the staining of plaque pathology in AD, yet the effect of FA on intraneuronal Abeta staining has been reported to be low and similar to the effect of heat or even to counteract the enhancing effect of heat pretreatment on intraneuronal Abeta immunohistochemical detection. To overcome these inconsistencies, there is a need for optimization of the staining protocol for intraneuronal Abeta detection and more knowledge is required concerning the effects of the different antigen retrieval methods. In the present work, we optimized the staining protocol for intraneuronal Abeta in paraffin-embedded sections in relation to heat and FA using four different mouse models known to accumulate intraneuronal Abeta peptides. It was found that FA is essential for the staining of highly aggregated intraneuronal Abeta peptides in AD transgenic mouse tissue.