Space-like 56Fe irradiation manifests mild, early sex-specific behavioral and neuropathological changes in wildtype and Alzheimer's-like transgenic mice.

摘要: Space travel will expose people to high-energy, heavy particle radiation, and the cognitive deficits induced by this exposure are not well understood. To investigate short-term effects of space we irradiated 4-month-old Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-like transgenic (Tg) mice wildtype (WT) littermates with a single, whole-body dose 10 or 50 cGy 56Fe ions (1 GeV/u) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. At ~1.5 months post irradiation, behavioural testing showed sex-, genotype-, dose-dependent changes in locomotor activity, contextual fear conditioning, grip strength, motor learning, mainly Tg but WT mice. There was little change general health, depression, anxiety. Two microPET imaging stable binding translocator protein ligand suggested no radiation-specific neuroinflammation, although initial uptake reduced female independently cerebral blood flow. Biochemical immunohistochemical analyses revealed that radiation amyloid-β levels microglia activation mice, modestly increased microhemorrhages male did affect synaptic marker compared sham controls. Taken together, show specific neuropathology behaviour possibly having implications for long-term travel.