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Updated: Jun 17, 2025
Preparation of Acute Hippocampal Slices from Rats and Transgenic Mice for the Study of Synaptic Alterations during Aging and Amyloid Pathology
Published on: March 23, 2011
Synaptic protein CSF levels relate to memory scores in individuals without dementia
Kirsten E J Wesenhagen1, Diederick M de Leeuw1, Jori Tomassen1
1Alzheimer Center Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam UMC.
Introduction:
We investigated how cerebrospinal fluid levels of synaptic proteins associate with memory function in normal cognition (CN) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and investigated the effect of amyloid positivity on these associations.
Methods:
We included 242 CN (105(43%) abnormal amyloid), and 278 MCI individuals (183(66%) abnormal amyloid) from EMIF-AD MBD and ADNI. For 181 (EMIF-AD MBD) and 36 (ADNI) proteins with a synaptic annotation in SynGO, associations with word learning recall were analysed with linear models.
Results:
Subsets of synaptic proteins showed lower levels with worse recall in preclinical AD (EMIF-AD MBD: 7, ADNI: 5 proteins, none overlapping), prodromal AD (EMIF-AD MBD only, 27 proteins) and non-AD MCI (EMIF-AD MBD: 1, ADNI: 7 proteins). The majority of these associations were specific to these groups.
Discussion:
Synaptic disturbance-related memory impairment occurred very early in AD, indicating it may be relevant to develop therapies targeting the synapse early in the disease.
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