Detecting Metabolic Changes in Aging Progression and Alzheimer's Disease Using Non‐Invasive Imaging

The lactate-to-pyruvate ratio is decreased in the AD model mice, indicating altered glycolytic activity. This decrease is also observed as the mice age. This ratio decreases from 10 to 16 months in the males, and 8 to 10 months in the females, in both the control and 5xFAD mice. This provides an interesting aging component to this study. The preliminary metabolomics data seems promising to detect affected brain metabolites, but more samples at multiple ages are currently being processed including younger cohorts of the AD model mice. Future work will involve immunohistopathological validation along with optical imaging of the retina in these animal cohorts as well as repeating the HP-MR experiments under therapeutic perturbation.