Altered excitatory and inhibitory neuronal subpopulation parameters are distinctly associated with tau and amyloid in Alzheimer's disease
Abstract
Background: Neuronal and circuit level abnormalities of excitation and inhibition are shown to be associated with tau and amyloid-beta (Aβ) in preclinical models of Alzheimer's disease (AD). These relationships remain poorly understood in patients with AD.
Methods: Using empirical spectra from magnetoencephalography (MEG) and computational modeling (neural mass model; NMM) we examined excitatory and inhibitory parameters of neuronal subpopulations and investigated their specific associations to regional tau and Aβ, measured by positron emission tomography (PET), in patients with AD.
Results: Patients with AD showed abnormal excitatory and inhibitory time-constants and neural gains compared to age-matched controls. Increased excitatory time-constants distinctly correlated with higher tau depositions while increased inhibitory time-constants distinctly correlated with higher Aβ depositions.
Conclusions: Our results provide critical insights about potential mechanistic links between abnormal neural oscillations and cellular correlates of impaired excitatory and inhibitory synaptic functions associated with tau and Aβ in patients with AD.
Funding: This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health grants: K08AG058749 (KGR), F32AG050434-01A1 (KGR), K23 AG038357 (KAV), P50 AG023501, P01 AG19724 (BLM), P50-AG023501 (BLM & GDR), R01 AG045611 (GDR); AG034570, AG062542 (WJ); NS100440 (SSN), DC176960 (SSN), DC017091 (SSN), AG062196 (SSN); a grant from John Douglas French Alzheimer's Foundation (KAV); grants from Larry L. Hillblom Foundation: 2015-A-034-FEL and (KGR); 2019-A-013-SUP (KGR); a grant from the Alzheimer's Association: (PCTRB-13-288476) (KAV), and made possible by Part the CloudTM, (ETAC-09-133596); a grant from Tau Consortium (GDR & WJJ), and a gift from the S. D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation.
Data availability
Data and materials availability: All data associated with this study are present in the paper or in the Supplementary Materials. Anonymized subject data will be shared on request from qualified investigators for the purposes of replicating procedures and results, and for other non-commercial research purposes within the limits of participants' consent. Correspondence and material requests should be addressed to Kamalini.ranasinghe@ucsf.edu
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institute on Aging (K08AG058749)
- Kamalini Ranasinghe
National Institute on Aging (K23 AG038357)
- Keith Vossel
National Institutes of Health
- Bruce L Miller
- William J Jagust
- Gil Rabinovici
- Ashish Raj
- Srikantan Nagarajan
Alzheimer's Association
- Kamalini Ranasinghe
- Keith Vossel
Larry L. Hillblom Foundation
- Kamalini Ranasinghe
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: Informed consent was obtained from all participants and the study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at UCSF (UCSF-IRB 10-02245).
Copyright
© 2022, Ranasinghe et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Further reading
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Heterogeneity of tumor metabolism is an important, but still poorly understood aspect of tumor biology. Present work is focused on the visualization and quantification of cellular metabolic heterogeneity of colorectal cancer using fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) of redox cofactor NAD(P)H. FLIM-microscopy of NAD(P)H was performed in vitro in four cancer cell lines (HT29, HCT116, CaCo2 and CT26), in vivo in the four types of colorectal tumors in mice and ex vivo in patients’ tumor samples. The dispersion and bimodality of the decay parameters were evaluated to quantify the intercellular metabolic heterogeneity. Our results demonstrate that patients’ colorectal tumors have significantly higher heterogeneity of energy metabolism compared with cultured cells and tumor xenografts, which was displayed as a wider and frequently bimodal distribution of a contribution of a free (glycolytic) fraction of NAD(P)H within a sample. Among patients’ tumors, the dispersion was larger in the high-grade and early stage ones, without, however, any association with bimodality. These results indicate that cell-level metabolic heterogeneity assessed from NAD(P)H FLIM has a potential to become a clinical prognostic factor.
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- Medicine
Background:
Physical activity has been associated with preventing the development of type 2 diabetes and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. However, our understanding of the precise molecular mechanisms underlying these effects remains incomplete and good biomarkers to objectively assess physical activity are lacking.
Methods:
We analyzed 3072 serum proteins in 26 men, normal weight or overweight, undergoing 12 weeks of a combined strength and endurance exercise intervention. We estimated insulin sensitivity with hyperinsulinemic euglycemic clamp, maximum oxygen uptake, muscle strength, and used MRI/MRS to evaluate body composition and organ fat depots. Muscle and subcutaneous adipose tissue biopsies were used for mRNA sequencing. Additional association analyses were performed in samples from up to 47,747 individuals in the UK Biobank, as well as using two-sample Mendelian randomization and mice models.
Results:
Following 12 weeks of exercise intervention, we observed significant changes in 283 serum proteins. Notably, 66 of these proteins were elevated in overweight men and positively associated with liver fat before the exercise regimen, but were normalized after exercise. Furthermore, for 19.7 and 12.1% of the exercise-responsive proteins, corresponding changes in mRNA expression levels in muscle and fat, respectively, were shown. The protein CD300LG displayed consistent alterations in blood, muscle, and fat. Serum CD300LG exhibited positive associations with insulin sensitivity, and to angiogenesis-related gene expression in both muscle and fat. Furthermore, serum CD300LG was positively associated with physical activity and negatively associated with glucose levels in the UK Biobank. In this sample, the association between serum CD300LG and physical activity was significantly stronger in men than in women. Mendelian randomization analysis suggested potential causal relationships between levels of serum CD300LG and fasting glucose, 2 hr glucose after an oral glucose tolerance test, and HbA1c. Additionally, Cd300lg responded to exercise in a mouse model, and we observed signs of impaired glucose tolerance in male, but not female, Cd300lg knockout mice.
Conclusions:
Our study identified several novel proteins in serum whose levels change in response to prolonged exercise and were significantly associated with body composition, liver fat, and glucose homeostasis. Serum CD300LG increased with physical activity and is a potential causal link to improved glucose levels. CD300LG may be a promising exercise biomarker and a therapeutic target in type 2 diabetes.
Funding:
South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority, Simon Fougners Fund, Diabetesforbundet, Johan Selmer Kvanes’ legat til forskning og bekjempelse av sukkersyke. The UK Biobank resource reference 53641. Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Investigator Grant (APP2017942). Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Award (DE220101226). Research Council of Norway (Project grant: 325640 and Mobility grant: 287198). The Medical Student Research Program at the University of Oslo. Novo Nordisk Fonden Excellence Emerging Grant in Endocrinology and Metabolism 2023 (NNF23OC0082123).
Clinical trial number:
clinicaltrials.gov: NCT01803568.