Browsing by Subject "Rats, Transgenic"

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    Altered diffusion tensor imaging measurements in aged transgenic Huntington disease rats.
    (Brain Struct Funct, 2013-05) Antonsen, Bjørnar T; Jiang, Yi; Veraart, Jelle; Qu, Hong; Nguyen, Huu Phuc; Sijbers, Jan; von Hörsten, Stephan; Johnson, G Allan; Leergaard, Trygve B
    Rodent models of Huntington disease (HD) are valuable tools for investigating HD pathophysiology and evaluating new therapeutic approaches. Non-invasive characterization of HD-related phenotype changes is important for monitoring progression of pathological processes and possible effects of interventions. The first transgenic rat model for HD exhibits progressive late-onset affective, cognitive, and motor impairments, as well as neuropathological features reflecting observations from HD patients. In this report, we contribute to the anatomical phenotyping of this model by comparing high-resolution ex vivo DTI measurements obtained in aged transgenic HD rats and wild-type controls. By region of interest analysis supplemented by voxel-based statistics, we find little evidence of atrophy in basal ganglia regions, but demonstrate altered DTI measurements in the dorsal and ventral striatum, globus pallidus, entopeduncular nucleus, substantia nigra, and hippocampus. These changes are largely compatible with DTI findings in preclinical and clinical HD patients. We confirm earlier reports that HD rats express a moderate neuropathological phenotype, and provide evidence of altered DTI measures in specific HD-related brain regions, in the absence of pronounced morphometric changes.
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    Diffuse white matter loss in a transgenic rat model of cerebral amyloid angiopathy.
    (Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism, 2021-05) Lee, Hedok; Xu, Feng; Liu, Xiaodan; Koundal, Sunil; Zhu, Xiaoyue; Davis, Judianne; Yanez, David; Schrader, Joseph; Stanisavljevic, Aleksandra; Rothman, Douglas L; Wardlaw, Joanna; Van Nostrand, William E; Benveniste, Helene
    Diffuse white matter (WM) disease is highly prevalent in elderly with cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD). In humans, cSVD such as cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) often coexists with Alzheimer's disease imposing a significant impediment for characterizing their distinct effects on WM. Here we studied the burden of age-related CAA pathology on WM disease in a novel transgenic rat model of CAA type 1 (rTg-DI). A cohort of rTg-DI and wild-type rats was scanned longitudinally using MRI for characterization of morphometry, cerebral microbleeds (CMB) and WM integrity. In rTg-DI rats, a distinct pattern of WM loss was observed at 9 M and 11 M. MRI also revealed manifestation of small CMB in thalamus at 6 M, which preceded WM loss and progressively enlarged until the moribund disease stage. Histology revealed myelin loss in the corpus callosum and thalamic CMB in all rTg-DI rats, the latter of which manifested in close proximity to occluded and calcified microvessels. The quantitation of CAA load in rTg-DI rats revealed that the most extensive microvascular Aβ deposition occurred in the thalamus. For the first time using in vivo MRI, we show that CAA type 1 pathology alone is associated with a distinct pattern of WM loss.