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Chronic sleep deprivation exacerbates cognitive and pathological impairments in APP/PS1/tau triple transgenic Alzheimer's disease model mice

WANG Chun¹, CAO Xu², YIN Jing¹, GAO Wen-Rui¹, LI Wei-Ran¹, QI Jin-Shun¹, WU Mei-Na^1,*

¹Department of Physiology, Key Laboratory of Cellular Physiology, Ministry of Education, Taiyuan 030001, China；²The School of Imaging Medicine, Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan 030001, China

Abstract

Sleep exerts important functions in the regulation of cognition and emotion. Recent studies have found that sleep disorder is one of the important risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but the effects of chronic sleep deprivation on the cognitive functions of AD model mice and its possible mechanism are still unclear. In the present study, 8-month-old male APP/PS1/tau triple transgenic AD model (3xTg-AD) mice and wild type (WT) mice (n = 8 for each group) were subjected to chronic sleep deprivation by using the modified multiple platform method, with 20 h of sleep deprivation each day for 21 days. Then, open field test, elevated plus maze test, sugar water preference test, object recognition test, Y maze test and conditioned fear memory test were performed to evaluate anxiety- and depression-like behaviors, and multiple cognitive functions. In addition, the immunohistochemistry technique was used to observe pathological characteristics in the hippocampus of mice. The results showed that: (1) Chronic sleep deprivation did not affect anxiety- (P = 0.539) and depression-like behaviors (P = 0.874) in 3xTg-AD mice; (2) Chronic sleep deprivation exacerbated the impairments of object recognition memory (P < 0.001), working memory (P = 0.002) and the conditioned fear memory (P = 0.039) in 3xTg-AD mice; (3) Chronic sleep deprivation increased amyloid β (Aβ) deposition (P < 0.001) and microglial activation (P < 0.001) in the hippocampus of 3xTg-AD mice, without inducing abnormal tau phosphorylation and neurofibrillary tangles. These results indicate that chronic sleep deprivation exacerbates the impairments of recognition memory, working memory and conditioned fear memory in 3xTg-AD mice by aggravating Aβ deposition and the excessive activation of microglia in the hippocampus.

Key words: APP/PS1/tau transgenic model mice; chronic sleep deprivation; learning and memory; β amyloid protein; microglia

Received: 2020-10-09　　Accepted: 2021-03-11

Corresponding author: 武美娜　　E-mail: wmna@163.com

DOI: 10.13294/j.aps.2021.0032

Citing This Article：

WANG Chun, CAO Xu, YIN Jing, GAO Wen-Rui, LI Wei-Ran, QI Jin-Shun, WU Mei-Na. Chronic sleep deprivation exacerbates cognitive and pathological impairments in APP/PS1/tau triple transgenic Alzheimer's disease model mice. Acta Physiol Sin 2021; 73 (3): 471-481 (in Chinese with English abstract).