Gut investigation of a mouse model of age-related human frailty syndrome to identify predictive signs of dementia.

We propose to investigate the gut of a murine model (SAMP8) of age-related human frailty syndrome to identify pathological alterations by means of nano X-ray phase contrast tomography (XPCT). The samples will be measured at different time-points from pre-symptomatic stages to detect and monitor the age-related impairment of intestinal barrier, which is indicated as a disease-relevant site by preliminary data obtained at the ID16 beamline. Since SAMP8 is a promising model for sporadic Alzheimer’s disease (AD), we believe that the experiment could help to identify predictive signs of structural alterations as frailty indicators of progression to AD in the mouse, especially at the earliest phase of the disease.