Contributions of a high-fat diet to Alzheimer's disease-related decline: A longitudinal behavioural and structural neuroimaging study in mouse models

Publication date: Available online 20 November 2018Source: NeuroImage: ClinicalAuthor(s): Colleen Rollins, Daniel Gallino, Vincent Kong, Gülebru Ayranci, Gabriel A. Devenyi, Jürgen Germann, M. Mallar ChakravartyAbstractObesity is recognized as a significant risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Studies have supported that obesity accelerates AD-related pathophysiology and memory impairment in mouse models of AD. However, the nature of the brain structure-behaviour relationship mediating this acceleration remains unclear. In this manuscript we evaluated the impact of adolescent obesity on the brain morphology of the triple transgenic mouse model of AD (3xTg) and a non-transgenic control model of the same background strain (B6129s) using longitudinally acquired structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). At 8 weeks of age, animals were placed on a high-fat diet (HFD) or an ingredient-equivalent control diet (CD). Structural images were acquired at 8, 16, and 24 weeks. At 25 weeks, animals underwent the novel object recognition (NOR) task and the Morris water maze (MWM) to assess short-term non-associative memory and spatial memory, respectively. All analyses were carried out across four groups: B6129s-CD and -HFD and 3xTg-CD and -HFD. Neuroanatomical changes in MRI-derived brain morphology were assessed using volumetric and deformation-based analyses. HFD-induced obesity during adolescence exacerbated brain volume alterations by adult life in the 3xTg mouse model i...
Source: NeuroImage: Clinical - Category: Radiology Source Type: research