1H MRS Characterization of Cerebral Metabolic Changes in Transgenic Mouse Models of Alzheimer’s Disease

Recently developed transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) exhibit many features of human AD pathology. Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H MRS) is a useful tool for characterizing and monitoring the metabolic changes and the progression of the disease in both human AD patients and transgenic mouse models of AD. In this paper, we review recent 1H MRS findings in the transgenic mouse models of AD and compare the results obtained from the animal models to those observed in human patients. The main 1H MRS findings in the transgenic mouse models are significantly reduced cerebral N-acetyl aspartate (NAA) and glutamate levels and significantly increased cerebral myo-inositol level. These results agree well with the findings in human AD brains. It can be expected that the combined use of 1H MRS and transgenic mouse models of AD will help us accelerate drug discovery for AD.