ABSTRACT
AA amyloidosis develops in patients with chronic inflammatory or infectious diseases or other conditions associated with sustained elevation of serum amyloid A (SAA) levels. This chapter aims to report the relatively high frequency of systemic amyloidosis among common marmosets housed at the New England Primate Research Center. The discovery that common marmosets can spontaneously develop AA amyloidosis provides a unique opportunity to study in a primate model the pathogenesis of this disease and to develop therapies that can ameliorate or prevent this or other systemic amyloid-related disorders. Although the development of systemic AA amyloidosis clinically or that induced experimentally typically is associated with chronic inflammation or infection and attendant, sustained elevation of the amyloidogenic SAA precursor molecule, these conditions did not differentiate affected from non-affected marmosets. The primary and secondary reagents included an anti-human SAA monoclonal antibody and an affinity-purified horse anti-mouse IgG horseradish peroxidase conjugate, respectively.
