Last, the number of cortical astrocytes was found to be similar between healthy and AD brains in two stereology-based quantitative human postmortem studies: one using morphological identification of astrocytes in Nissl-stained sections (Pelvig et al., 2003), and another using double fluorescent immunohistochemistry with GFAP and aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 isoform L1 (ALDH1L1) or glutamine synthetase as pan-astrocytic constitutive markers (Serrano-Pozo et al., 2013a). This evidence concerns the gene GFAP and Alzheimer disease.