Browsing by Subject "cerebral blood flow"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Characterization of Cerebral Blood Flow in Older Adults: A Potential Early Biomarker for Alzheimer's Disease
    (2022-04) Swinford, Cecily Gwinn; Risacher, Shannon L.; Saykin, Andrew J.; Apostolova, Liana G.; Wu, Yu-Chien; Gao, Sujuan
    Over 5 million older adults have Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the US, and this number is projected to double by 2050. Clinical trials of potential pharmacological treatments for AD have largely shown that once cognitive decline has occurred, targeting AD pathology in the brain does not improve cognition. Therefore, it is likely that the most effective treatments for AD will need to be administered before cognitive symptoms occur, necessitating a biomarker for the early, preclinical stages of AD. Cerebral blood flow (CBF) is a promising early biomarker for AD. CBF is decreased in individuals with AD compared to their normally aging counterparts, and it has been shown that CBF is altered in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and earlier stages and may occur prior to amyloid or tau aggregation. In addition, CBF can be measured using arterial spin labeled (ASL) MRI, a noninvasive imaging technique that can be safely repeated over time to track prognosis or treatment efficacy. The complex temporal and spatial patterns of altered CBF over the course of AD, as well as the relationships between CBF and AD-specific and -nonspecific factors, will be critical to elucidate in order for CBF to be an effective early biomarker of AD. Here, we begin to characterize the relationships between CBF and risk factors, pathologies, and symptoms of AD. Chapter 1 is a systematic review of published literature that compares CBF in individuals with AD and MCI to CBF in cognitively normal (CN) controls and assesses the relationship between CBF and cognitive function. Chapter 2 reports our original research assessing the relationships between CBF, hypertension, and race/ethnicity in older adults without dementia from the the Indiana Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (IADRC) and Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). Chapter 3 reports our original research assessing the relationships between CBF and amyloid beta and tau aggregation measured with PET, as well as whether hypertension or APOEε4 positivity affects these relationships, in older adults without dementia from the IADRC. Chapter 4 reports our original research assessing the relationship between the spatial distribution of tau and subjective memory concerns.
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    Integrated Feedforward and Feedback Mechanisms in Neurovascular Coupling
    (Wolters Kluwer, 2024-12) Meng, Lingzhong; Rasmussen, Mads; Meng, Deyi M.; White, Fletcher A.; Wu, Long-Jun; Anesthesia, School of Medicine
    Neurovascular coupling (NVC) is the mechanism that drives the neurovascular response to neural activation, and NVC dysfunction has been implicated in various neurologic diseases. NVC is driven by (1) nonmetabolic feedforward mechanisms that are mediated by various signaling pathways and (2) metabolic feedback mechanisms that involve metabolic factors. However, the interplay between these feedback and feedforward mechanisms remains unresolved. We propose that feedforward mechanisms normally drive a swift, neural activation–induced regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) overshoot, which floods the tissue beds, leading to local hypocapnia and hyperoxia. The feedback mechanisms are triggered by the resultant hypocapnia (not hyperoxia), which causes cerebral vasoconstriction in the neurovascular unit that counterbalances the rCBF overshoot and returns rCBF to a level that matches the metabolic activity. If feedforward mechanisms function improperly (eg, in a disease state), the rCBF overshoot, tissue-bed flooding, and local hypocapnia fail to occur or occur on a smaller scale. Consequently, the neural activation–related increase in metabolic activity results in local hypercapnia and hypoxia, both of which drive cerebral vasodilation and increase rCBF. Thus, feedback mechanisms ensure the brain milieu’s stability when feedforward mechanisms are impaired. Our proposal integrates the feedforward and feedback mechanisms underlying NVC and suggests that these 2 mechanisms work like a fail-safe system, to a certain degree. We also discussed the difference between NVC and cerebral metabolic rate-CBF coupling and the clinical implications of our proposed framework.
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    Targeted genetic analysis of cerebral blood flow imaging phenotypes implicates the INPP5D gene
    (Elsevier, 2019-09) Yao, Xiaohui; Risacher, Shannon L.; Nho, Kwangsik; Saykin, Andrew J.; Wang, Ze; Shen, Li; Radiology and Imaging Sciences, School of Medicine
    The vascular hypothesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) has proposed the involvement of brain hypoperfusion in AD pathogenesis, where cognitive decline and dysfunction result from dwindling cerebral blood flow (CBF). Based on the vascular hypothesis of Alzheimer's disease, we focused on exploring how genetic factors influence AD pathogenesis via the cerebrovascular system. To investigate the role of CBF endophenotypes in AD pathogenesis, we performed a targeted genetic analysis of 258 subjects from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative cohort to examine associations between 4033 single-nucleotide polymorphisms of 24 AD genes and CBF measures in 4 brain regions. A novel association with CBF measure in the left angular gyrus was identified in an INPP5D single-nucleotide polymorphism (i.e., rs61068452; p = 1.48E-7; corrected p = 2.39E-3). The gene-based analysis discovered both INPP5D and CD2AP associated with the left angular gyrus CBF. Further analyses on nonoverlapping samples revealed that rs61068452-G was associated with lower CSF t-tau/Aβ1–42 ratio. Our findings suggest a protective role of rs61068452-G in an AD-relevant cerebrovascular endophenotype, which has the potential to provide novel insights for better mechanistic understanding of AD.
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    The 677C > T variant in methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase causes morphological and functional cerebrovascular deficits in mice
    (Sage, 2022-09-01) Reagan , Alaina M.; Christensen, Karen E.; Graham, Leah C.; Bedwell, Amanda A.; Eldridge, Kierra; Speedy, Rachael; Figueiredo, Lucas L.; Persohn, Scott C.; Bottiglieri, Teodoro; Nho, Kwangsik; Sasner, Michael; Territo, Paul R.; Rozen, Rima; Howell, Gareth R.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID) particularly Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRDs) are increasing; however, mechanisms driving cerebrovascular decline are poorly understood. Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) is a critical enzyme in the folate and methionine cycles. Variants in MTHFR, notably 677 C > T, are associated with dementias, but no mouse model existed to identify mechanisms by which MTHFR677C > T increases risk. Therefore, MODEL-AD created a novel knock-in (KI) strain carrying the Mthfr677C > T allele on the C57BL/6J background (Mthfr677C > T) to characterize morphology and function perturbed by the variant. Consistent with human clinical data, Mthfr677C > T mice have reduced enzyme activity in the liver and elevated plasma homocysteine levels. MTHFR enzyme activity is also reduced in the Mthfr677C > T brain. Mice showed reduced tissue perfusion in numerous brain regions by PET/CT as well as significantly reduced vascular density, pericyte number and increased GFAP-expressing astrocytes in frontal cortex. Electron microscopy revealed cerebrovascular damage including endothelial and pericyte apoptosis, reduced luminal size, and increased astrocyte and microglial presence in the microenvironment. Collectively, these data support a mechanism by which variations in MTHFR perturb cerebrovascular health laying the foundation to incorporate our new Mthfr677C > T mouse model in studies examining genetic susceptibility for cerebrovascular dysfunction in ADRDs.