title: The older rabbit as an animal model: implications for Alzheimer's disease.
abstract: Eyeblink classical conditioning (EBCC) is impared in rabbits and humans during normal aging and severely disrupted in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and older Down's Syndrome patients (called DS/AD). To determine if older rabbit brains developed neuropathological evidence of Alzheimer-like pathology to account for impaired EBCC, the cerebellum and hippocampus of behaviorally tested rabbits aged 3 months to 7 years were probed using immunohistochemical techniques. Significant cell loss and gliosis were observed in some brain regions, but there was little or no deposition of beta-amyloid (A beta) or abnormal tau accumulations in telencephalic neurons, even in rabbits over 7 years of age. Our aims here are to: 1) report the results of our search for Alzheimer-like neuropathology in aged rabbit brains; and 2) highlight similarities in the brain mechanisms for EBCC between rabbits and humans and, hence, the utility of studies of EBCC in rabbits as a model system for testing cognition-enhancing drugs.
authors: Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Philadelphia Geriatric Center, PA 19141, USA.
authors: D S
authors: DS
authors: Woodruff-Pak
authors: J Q
authors: JQ
authors: Trojanowski
mesh_terms: D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000473:pathology* / Q000523:psychology; D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D006801:Humans; D011817:Rabbits / Q000502:physiology*