Neurofibrillary tangles and Alzheimer's disease

Professor Kenneth Kosik discusses neurofibrillary tangles, which form inside a cell and are made up of a protein called tau. There is a strong relationship with plaques and amyloid deposition.

The other hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease is the neurofibrillary tangle. That is made up of a different protein, a protein called tau (T-A-U, the Greek letter tau), and in contrast to the plaque, the tangle forms inside the cell. Now, there has been a debate for a long time about the primacy of the tangles or the plaques in the disease, and even more importantly what is the relationship between the two? We now know that fundamental in the disease process of Alzheimer’s disease, the fundamental pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease, is the plaque and the amyloid deposition. Then, secondarily, the amyloid triggers this reaction in cells to form tangles.