The dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) shows the important associations with the Parkinson disease and the Alzheimer disease (AD). In this study, quantitative proteome analysis of DLB brains was performed using fluorescent two-dimensional difference gel electrophoresis (2-D DIGE) to identify disease-specific changes in protein expression. We compared signals corresponding to individual proteins between post mortem brain tissues from DLB patients and those from age-matched nondemented controls (NDC). In order to provide a more complete picture of pathogenesis in DLB, we investigated proteins from three brain tissues such as hippocampus, frontal cortex and occipital cortex. We detected 30 spots as differentially expressed proteins in hippocampus, 41 spots in frontal cortex and 73 spots in occipital cortex. Among them we identified 33 proteins and found that most of proteins are related to oxidative stress or mitochondrial glycolysis. As noted, we found that septin 8, a member of family proteins whose functions are involved in cell polarity, cytoskeletal remodeling, vesicle transport and cell cycle progression, was increased in all tissues from DLB. Taken together, our findings support the hypothesis that both mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress are involved in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disease and in addition, propose septin 8 as a novel protein possibly involved in the pathogenesis of DLB.
