AUTHOR=Ba Li , Huang Lifang , He Ziyu , Deng Saiyue , Xie Yi , Zhang Min , Jacob Cornelius , Antonecchia Emanuele , Liu Yuqing , Xiao Wenchang , Xie Qingguo , Huang Zhili , Yi Chenju , D'Ascenzo Nicola , Ding Fengfei TITLE=Does Chronic Sleep Fragmentation Lead to Alzheimer's Disease in Young Wild-Type Mice? JOURNAL=Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience VOLUME=Volume 13 - 2021 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/aging-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2021.759983 DOI=10.3389/fnagi.2021.759983 ISSN=1663-4365 ABSTRACT=

Chronic sleep insufficiency is becoming a common issue in the young population nowadays, mostly due to life habits and work stress. Studies in animal models of neurological diseases reported that it would accelerate neurodegeneration progression and exacerbate interstitial metabolic waste accumulation in the brain. In this paper, we study whether chronic sleep insufficiency leads to neurodegenerative diseases in young wild-type animals without a genetic pre-disposition. To this aim, we modeled chronic sleep fragmentation (SF) in young wild-type mice. We detected pathological hyperphosphorylated-tau (Ser396/Tau5) and gliosis in the SF hippocampus. 18F-labeled fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography scan (18F-FDG-PET) further revealed a significant increase in brain glucose metabolism, especially in the hypothalamus, hippocampus and amygdala. Hippocampal RNAseq indicated that immunological and inflammatory pathways were significantly altered in 1.5-month SF mice. More interestingly, differential expression gene lists from stress mouse models showed differential expression patterns between 1.5-month SF and control mice, while Alzheimer's disease, normal aging, and APOEε4 mutation mouse models did not exhibit any significant pattern. In summary, 1.5-month sleep fragmentation could generate AD-like pathological changes including tauopathy and gliosis, mainly linked to stress, as the incremented glucose metabolism observed with PET imaging suggested. Further investigation will show whether SF could eventually lead to chronic neurodegeneration if the stress condition is prolonged in time.