How to run a brain bank: potentials and pitfalls in the use of human post-mortem brain material in research

Abstract

Brain banks for neurological diseases serve as a link between the clinician, the neuropathologist and the basic scientist who require brain tissue samples from patients who have undergone a thorough clinical investigation and whose brains have been subjected to detailed neuropathological analysis. In order to provide research groups with post-mortem brain tissue from patients who show clinical signs of dementia such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), senile dementia of Alzheimer type (SDAT), vascular dementia including multi-infarct dementia (MID) and mixed dementia, a brain bank was established at Huddinge University Hospital at the end of 1988. The brain bank provides either rapidly or slowly frozen tissue samples, tissue samples fixed in formalin (short/long fixation time), cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and blood samples. Average postmortem times are from 3-47 hours. The information available on the cases includes the clinical diagnosis, the premortem clinical investigation with behavioral observations, psychometric and neuropsychological test data, premortem medication, cause of death, agonal state, pH in brain and CSF, and the general anatomic and neuropathologic assessments leading to the final diagnosis.