Longitudinal progression of choroid plexus enlargement is associated with female sex, cognitive decline and ApoE E4 homozygote status
Post Written By: Benedetta Romeo
The choroid plexus (CP) is a vascularized epithelial structure in the brain’s ventricles and is essential for cerebral homeostasis through cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) production, the blood-CSF barrier, and inflammatory regulation.
CP dysfunction and pro-inflammatory signaling are probably linked to aging and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
In this publication, we conducted a retrospective study on volumetric CP changes in a longitudinal cohort of subjects across the cognitive impairment spectrum. The analysis focused mainly on sex differences in CP volume changes over time.
Key observations:
- CP volume increased over time across all groups studied. However, CP enlargement occurred more than twice as rapidly in females compared to males
- Subjects who were ApoE E4 homozygotes exhibited CP volume increases more than three times that of non-carriers or heterozygotes, indicating a strong genetic influence on CP enlargement in cognitive impairment contexts
- Significant CP volume increases were seen primarily in “convertors” (subjects progressing to a more severe cognitive impairment), while stable mild cognitive impairment and cognitively normal groups had smaller increases. Stable Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients showed no significant change
Check the publication here:Frontiers | Longitudinal progression of choroid plexus enlargement is associated with female sex, cognitive decline and ApoE E4 homozygote status
A big thank you to everybody who contributed to this article: Julie Novakova Martinkova, Maria Teresa Ferretti, Alberto Ferrari, Ondrej Lerch, Veronika Matuskova, Juraj Secnik, and Jakub Hort for the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative