Mössbauer Studies of Pathological Brain Tissues Affected by PSP Disease

Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is a neurological disease leading to the damage of two brain structures: globus pallidus and substantia nigra. The pathomechanism of this disease is still unknown. One of the hypotheses is oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is an overproduction of free radicals in which iron may be involved. To verify the hypothesis that iron may play a role in PSP we performed the Mössbauer comparative studies of pathological and control tissues. Ten samples of PSP globus pallidus, ten samples of PSP substantia nigra, twelve control samples of globus pallidus and nine control samples of substantia nigra were measured in a conventional Mössbauer spectrometer at 90 K. The Mössbauer spectra obtained for all samples showed well resolved doublets with an isomer shift of 0.46±0.01 mm/s and a quadruple splitting of 0.70±0.02 mm/s. The main difference in these preliminary studies was in the concentration of iron. The concentration in PSP samples in globus pallidus was found to be 257±19 ng/mg tissue, compared to 183±22 ng/mg in control samples and 301±26 ng/mg in substantia nigra compared to 188±22 ng/mg in control samples. Taking into consideration that we did not notice any substantial increase in iron concentration in Parkinsonian substantia nigra compared to control substantia nigra, but a substantial increase in both substantia nigra and globus pallidus in PSP, may suggest that iron plays a different role in the pathomechanisms of PSP and of Parkinson's disease.