Authors:

Hannah E Phelps

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About Paper:

Parkinson's disease (PD), Dementia with Lewy Body (DLB) and Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) are common and rapidly growing neurodegenerative disorders, with age being the major risk factor. Loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra is a pathological hallmark of PD, DLB, and MSA, but have also been associated with normal aging, making the use of aged animals for quantification of cell loss associated with disease potentially problematic. Comparing dopaminergic neurons in young and aged rat brains using unbiased stereological quantification has not been well studied. We aimed to quantify the dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) and ventral tegmental area (VTA) in young and aged rats. Using 5 month and 23- month-old Fischer 344 x Brown Norway F1 hybrid rats of both sexes, immunofluorescence and stereology was completed. Immunofluorescence was used to stain for tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) and dopaminergic cell bodies were quantified using Microbrightfield's Stereoinvestigator software. The number of dopaminergic cells in the SNc and VTA do not change with age (p=0.6380), indicating the aging process in rats is dissimilar to that in humans. In addition, there are no sex differences in dopaminergic cell bodies (p=0.83). These results inform future stereological studies in age-related disease models. 59

Source:

University of Florida / 2024

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Co-authors:

Hannah E Phelps