Abstract
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases in the elderly. The aim of this study was to explore the effects of AD on cardiac function and autonomic nervous function, and the feasibility of electrocardiogram (ECG) in monitoring the development of AD. APP/PS1 double transgenic mice were used in the Morris water maze (MWM) experiment to evaluate the changes of cognitive ability of AD mice, then the non-invasive ECG acquisition system was used and the changes of ECG intervals and heart rate variability (HRV) were analyzed. AD mice already had cognitive dysfunction at the age of 5 months, reaching the level of mild dementia, and the degree of dementia increased with the course of disease. There were no significant changes in ECG intervals in the AD group at each month. The mean square of successive RR interval differences, percentage of intervals >6 ms different from preceding interval, and normalized high frequency power component in the AD group were decreased and low-to-high frequency power ratio and normalized low frequency power component were increased. Combined with the results of the MWM, it was shown that the regulation mechanism of sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves in mice was already imbalanced in early stage AD, which was manifested as the increase of excessive activity of sympathetic nerves and the inhibition of parasympathetic activities. Therefore, ECG-based analysis of HRV may become a means of daily monitoring of AD and provide an auxiliary basis for clinical diagnosis.
Highlights
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is in one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases in the elderly, which has two pathological hallmarks
On the first and second day of training, there was no significant difference in the escape latencies between groups, while from the third to the sixth day of training, the escape latencies of all AD groups were significantly longer compared with that of the wild type (WT) group at same age
The percent difference between the final score and the reference value of each AD mouse was calculated, and results showed that the ratios of mice in the 5-month-old AD group were mainly distributed between 20 and 30%, the ratios of mice in the 7-month-old AD group were mainly distributed between 30 and 40%, and the ratios of mice in the 10- and 12-month-old AD groups were above 40%, indicating that the 5-month-old AD mice had mild dementia, 7-month-old AD mice had moderate dementia, and 10- and 12-monthold AD mice had severe dementia
Summary
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is in one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases in the elderly, which has two pathological hallmarks. There is still no effective treatment for AD, but studies have shown that timely diagnosis and interventional therapy can help against the development of the disease [3]. There is no single detection method for AD, and doctors usually use multiple methods for diagnosis, including a detailed medical history and family medical history provided by the patient and family members, family opinions on the patient’s thinking skills and behavioral changes, cognitive testing combined with clinical examinations, etc. The clinical examinations include mostly blood tests, magnetic resonance imaging, cerebrospinal fluid biomarker detection, and positron emission computed tomography [4,5,6,7]. A simple, low-cost effective detection method is of great importance for determination of the development of AD
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Schedule a callMore From: Brazilian journal of medical and biological research = Revista brasileira de pesquisas medicas e biologicas
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