Chronic treatment with five vascular risk factors causes cerebral amyloid angiopathy but no Alzheimer pathology in C57BL6 mice.

Chronic treatment with five vascular risk factors causes cerebral amyloid angiopathy but no Alzheimer pathology in C57BL6 mice. Brain Behav Immun. 2019 Jan 18;: Authors: Foidl BM, Humpel C Abstract Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative brain disorder and the most common form of dementia coming along with cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) in more than 70% of all cases. However, CAA occurs also in pure form without AD pathology. Vascular life style risk factors such as obesity, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes, stress or an old age play an important role in the progression of CAA. So far, no animal model for sporadic CAA has been reported, thus the aim of the present study was to create and characterize a new mouse model for sporadic CAA by treatment with different vascular risk factors. Healthy C57BL6 mice were treated with lifestyle vascular risk factors for 35 or 56 weeks: lipopolysaccharide, social stress, streptozotozin, high cholesterol diet and copper in the drinking water. Four behavioral tests (black-white box, classical maze, cheeseboard maze and plus-maze discriminative avoidance task) showed impaired learning, memory and executive functions as well as anxiety with increased age. The treated animals exhibited increased plasma levels of cortisol, insulin, interleukin-1ß, glucose and cholesterol, confirming the effectiveness of the treatment. Confocal microscopy analysis displayed severe vess...
Source: Brain, Behavior, and Immunity - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Brain Behav Immun Source Type: research