Regulation of metallothionein-III (GIF) mRNA in the brain of patients with Alzheimer disease is not impaired.

Contradictory results have been reported on the downregulation and role of the brain-specific protein metallothionein-III (MT-III, GIF) in Alzheimer disease (AD). In this article, the importance of MT-III downregulation in AD brain was re-evaluated in temporal and frontal cortex, hippocampus, and cerebellum of 11 AD patients and two groups of five and six control subjects, respectively. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to quantify the levels of MT-III mRNA relative to the levels of three constitutive RNAs: beta-actin, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (G3PDH), and ribosomal RNA 18S (rRNA 18S). The distribution of MT-III was similar to that of each of the three constitutive RNAs. The relative levels of each of these RNAs was high in brain regions examined in both AD patients and control subjects. Our findings do not support a downregulation of MT-III mRNA in the frontal cortex as well as the temporal cortex and hippocampus of AD patients. However, the level of MT-III mRNA was not constant in the investigated samples, suggesting that MT-III mRNA regulation could be controlled by factors other than AD pathology. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) mRNA levels were hardly detectable by RT-PCR in human brain tissue; a trend for a decrease was apparent in the temporal cortex of AD patients. In conclusion, the content of MT-III mRNA in the brain of AD patients was not detectably impaired, whereas BDNF mRNA may be affected.