title: Behavioral stress fails to accelerate the onset and progression of plaque pathology in the brain of a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease.
abstract: Conflicting findings exist regarding the link between environmental factors and development of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in a variety of transgenic mouse models of AD. In the present study, we investigated the effect of behavioral stress on the onset and progression of Aβ pathology in the brains of TgCRND8 mice, a transgenic mouse model of AD. One group of TgCRND8 mice was subjected to restraint stress starting at 1 month of age until they were 3 months old, while restraint stress in the second group started at 4 months of age until they were 6 months old. After 2 months of treatment, no differences in the soluble, formic acid extracted, or histologically detected Aβ deposition in the cortical and hippocampal levels were found between non-stressed and stressed mice. These results showed that restraint stress alone failed to aggravate amyloid pathology when initiated either before or after the age of amyloid plaque deposition in TgCRND8 mice, suggesting that if stress aggravated AD phenotype, it may not be via an amyloid-related mechanism in the TgCRND8 mice. These findings are indicative that plaque load per se may not be used as a significant criterion for evaluating the effect of stress on AD patients.
authors: School of Chinese Medicine, Faculty of Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
authors: Qiuju
authors: Q
authors: Yuan
authors: Huanxing
authors: H
authors: Su
authors: Wing Hin
authors: WH
authors: Chau
authors: Cheung
authors: C
authors: Toa Ng
authors: Jian-Dong
authors: JD
authors: Huang
authors: Wutian
authors: W
authors: Wu
authors: Zhi-Xiu
authors: ZX
authors: Lin
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging / Q000473:pathology; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000097:blood / Q000150:complications / Q000473:pathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D016229:Amyloid beta-Peptides / Q000378:metabolism; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D003345:Corticosterone / Q000097:blood; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D018450:Disease Progression; D006801:Humans; D007031:Hypothalamus / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D051379:Mice; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D009474:Neurons / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D058225:Plaque, Amyloid / Q000097:blood / Q000150:complications / Q000473:pathology*; D016760:Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-fos / Q000378:metabolism; D012149:Restraint, Physical; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000097:blood / Q000150:complications / Q000473:pathology*
chemical_list: D016229:Amyloid beta-Peptides; D016760:Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-fos; D003345:Corticosterone