Gadolinium-staining reveals amyloid plaques in the brain of Alzheimer's transgenic mice
2012
Detection of
amyloidplaques in the brain by in vivo neuroimaging is a very promising biomarker approach for early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and evaluation of therapeutic efficacy. Here we describe a new method to detect
amyloidplaques by in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) based on the
intracerebroventricular injectionof a nontargeted gadolinium (Gd)-based contrast agent, which rapidly diffuses throughout the brain and increases the signal and contrast of magnetic resonance (MR) images by shortening the T1 relaxation time. This gain in image sensitivity after in vitro and in vivo Gd staining significantly improves the detection and resolution of individual
amyloidplaques in the cortex and hippocampus of AD transgenic mice. The improved
image resolutionis sensitive enough to demonstrate an age-dependent increase of
amyloidplaque load and a good correlation between the
amyloidload measured by MRI and histology. These results provide the first demonstration that nontargeted Gd staining can enhance the detection of
amyloidplaques to follow the progression of AD and to evaluate the activity of
amyloid-lowering therapeutic strategies in longitudinal studies.
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