Ohene, Yolanda;
Morrey, William J;
Powell, Elizabeth;
Smethers, Katherine F;
Luka, Nadim;
South, Kieron;
Berks, Michael;
... Dickie, Ben R; + view all
(2025)
MRI detects blood-brain barrier alterations in a rat model of Alzheimer’s disease and lung infection.
npj imaging
, 3
, Article 8. 10.1038/s44303-025-00071-5.
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Ohene et al. - 2025 - MRI detects blood-brain barrier alterations in a r.pdf - Published Version Download (2MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Pneumonia is a common infection in people suffering with Alzheimer’s disease, leading to delirium, critical illness or severe neurological decline, which may be due to an amplified response of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to peripheral insult. We assess the response of the BBB to repeated Streptococcus pneumoniae lung infection in rat model of Alzheimer’s disease (TgF344-AD), at 13- and 18-months old, using dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI and filter exchange imaging. Higher BBB water exchange rate is initially detected in infected TgF344-AD rats. BBB water exchange rates correlated with hippocampus aquaporin-4 water channel expression in infected animals. We detected no differences in BBB permeability to gadolinium contrast agent measured by DCE-MRI, confirmed by staining for tight junction proteins, occludin and claudin-5. These findings provide insight into the mechanisms of how peripheral inflammation impacts the BBB.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | MRI detects blood-brain barrier alterations in a rat model of Alzheimer’s disease and lung infection |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s44303-025-00071-5 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s44303-025-00071-5 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s), 2025. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | Diseases, Imaging the immune system. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Med Phys and Biomedical Eng |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10216076 |
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