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Fig. 4 | Acta Neuropathologica Communications

Fig. 4

From: Damaged mitochondria coincide with presynaptic vesicle loss and abnormalities in alzheimer’s disease brain

Fig. 4

Representative EM images of dendritic spines containing mitochondria in AD cases (A, B) and control cases (C, D). Presynaptic terminals are colored light blue and the dendritic spines are colored light yellow. Damaged mitochondria are noted as (dM), intact mitochondria as (iM). The dendritic spine size is larger in the AD group (E, p < 0.05). The number of mitochondria in the dendritic spine is slightly decreased in the AD cases (F, p = 0.11), and there is no change in mean mitochondria aspect ratio between the AD and control cases (G, p > 0.05). However, mitochondria in post-synaptic dendrites find they are much larger in the AD cases (H, p < 0.05). The percentage of dendritic spines with damaged mitochondria is also higher in the AD cases compared to controls (I, p < 0.05). Comparison of the aspect ratio and size for the intact and damaged mitochondria separately, finds that the damaged mitochondria have lower aspect ratios than intact mitochondria in AD cases only (J, p < 0.05). In the AD cases, spine damaged mitochondria are larger than the intact mitochondria (K, p < 0.001), and are larger than the damaged mitochondria in control cases (K, p < 0.05). Data are Means ± S.E.M. of six AD and six control cases. Student t test (E-I) or one-way analysis of variance (J, K). *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001

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