Chloroquine myopathy suggests that tau is degraded in lysosomes: implication for the formation of paired helical filaments in Alzheimer's disease

We have found that amorphous tau deposits in chloroquine myopathy (CM), a vacuolar myopathy induced by the administration of chloroquine, a well-known lysosomotropic agent. The dynamics of tau in CM and immunocytochemistry strongly suggest that the accumulation of tau is due to defective tau degradation in the lysosomal compartment in the muscle. This observation may offer a new view on the formation of paired helical filaments in Alzheimer's disease: this selective protein degradation pathway may be defective and result in intracellular accumulation of tau, thereby forming the unusual filaments. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.