Visualization of microhemorrhages with optical histology in mouse model of cerebral amyloid angiopathy (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is a neurovascular disease that is strongly associated with an increase in the number and size of spontaneous microhemorrhages. Conventional methods, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), can detect microhemorrhages while positron emission tomography (PET) with Pittsburgh Compound B can detect amyloid deposits. MRI and PET can separately demonstrate the presence of microhemorrhages and CAA in affected brains in vivo; however, there is still a lack of strong evidence for the direct involvement of CAA in the presence of microhemorrhage formation. In this study, we use optical histology, a method which combines histochemical staining, chemical optical clearing, and optical imaging, in a Tg2576 mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease to enable simultaneous, co-registered three-dimensional visualization of cerebral microvasculature, microhemorrhages, and amyloid deposits. Our data strongly suggest that microhemorrhages are localized within the brain regions affected by amyloid deposits. All but two observed microhemorrhages (n=18) were closely localized with vessels affected by CAA whereas no microhemorrhages or amyloid deposits were observed in wild type mouse brain sections. Our data also suggest that the predominant type of CAA-related microhemorrhage is associated with leaky or ruptured hemorrhagic microvasculature within the hippocampus and cerebral cortex rather than occluded ischemic microvasculature. The proposed optical histology method will allow future studies about the relationship between CAA and microhemorrhages during disease development and in response to treatment strategies.