Youh, R;
Perera, C;
Katsiva, C;
Harrison, IF;
Lythgoe, MF;
Wright, DK;
Nizari, S;
(2025)
Evidence for reduced choroid plexus volume in the aged brain.
Fluids Barriers CNS
, 22
(1)
, Article 97. 10.1186/s12987-025-00716-y.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: The choroid plexus plays an important role in brain homeostasis, including the active secretion of cerebrospinal fluid. Its function and structure have been reported to be affected by normal ageing. However, existing measures of choroid plexus volume may be complicated by partial volume (in vivo MRI) and tissue fixation artefacts (histology). In this study, we investigate possible changes in choroid plexus volume within the lateral ventricles of aged mice utilising two structural MRI protocols explicitly designed for time-efficient, high-resolution in vivo imaging of the choroid plexus. METHODS: Two MRI sequences were utilised to examine in vivo choroid plexus volume in the lateral ventricles of young (∼ 6 months) and aged (∼ 24 months) mouse brains: (1) an ultra-long echo-time T2 weighted fast-spin-echo and (2) a multi-TE T2* mapping protocol. A test-retest study was performed on a subset of the data to examine the reproducibility of choroid plexus volume estimation based on manual segmentation. A two-way ANOVA test was performed to determine possible differences in choroid plexus volume in young and aged mouse groups across the two distinct MRI protocols. RESULTS: Reproducibility tests showed a low test-retest variability of the manual segmentation pipeline for both MRI protocols. A statistically significant reduction of in vivo choroid plexus volume was found in the aged mouse brain. This finding is concordant with previous histological observations of a reduction in epithelial cell height with ageing across a wide range of species. CONCLUSIONS: We present an in vivo investigation of changes to lateral ventricle choroid plexus volume in the mouse brain utilising a manual segmentation approach based on two bespoke MRI protocols designed for time-efficient high resolution imaging of the choroid plexus. Based on these protocols, we provide evidence for a reduction in choroid plexus volume in the aged brain. This research provides insight for studies utilising MRI measurements of choroid plexus volume as a biomarker of age-related neurologic conditions as it indicates that the ageing process itself does not result in hypertrophy of the choroid plexus, but a decrease in tissue volume. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12987-025-00716-y.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Evidence for reduced choroid plexus volume in the aged brain |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s12987-025-00716-y |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s12987-025-00716-y |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Medicine UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Medicine > Department of Imaging |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10215318 |
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