Abstract

Apolipoprotein E ɛ4 allele is a common susceptibility gene for late-onset Alzheimer's disease. Brain vascular and metabolic deficits can occur in cognitively normal apolipoprotein E ɛ4 carriers decades before the onset of Alzheimer's disease. The goal of this study was to determine whether early intervention using rapamycin could restore neurovascular and neurometabolic functions, and thus impede pathological progression of Alzheimer's disease-like symptoms in pre-symptomatic Apolipoprotein E ɛ4 transgenic mice. Using in vivo, multimodal neuroimaging, we found that apolipoprotein E ɛ4 mice treated with rapamycin had restored cerebral blood flow, blood–brain barrier integrity and glucose metabolism, compared to age- and gender-matched wild-type controls. The preserved vasculature and metabolism were associated with amelioration of incipient learning deficits. We also found that rapamycin restored the levels of the proinflammatory cyclophilin A in vasculature, which may contribute to the preservation of cerebrovascular function in the apolipoprotein E ɛ4 transgenics. Our results show that rapamycin improves functional outcomes in this mouse model and may have potential as an effective intervention to block progression of vascular, metabolic and early cognitive deficits in human Apolipoprotein E ɛ4 carriers. As rapamycin is FDA-approved and neuroimaging is readily used in humans, the results of the present study may provide the basis for future Alzheimer's disease intervention studies in human subjects.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-31-2015

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism, v. 37, issue 1, p. 217-226.

© Author(s) 2015

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page(https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1177/0271678X15621575

Funding Information

The work was supported by funding from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) of NIH (K01AG040164 to A-LL), NIH CTSA at the University of Kentucky (UL1TR0000117; pilot grant to A-LL), 5I01BX002211-01A2 Veterans Administration Research and Development Merit Award, the Robert L. Bailey and Daughter Lisa K. Bailey Alzheimer’s Fund, the William & Ella Owens Medical Research Foundation and the JMR Barker Foundation to VG. JBJ was supported by NIA Training Grant 2T32AG021890-11.

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