Longitudinal MRI Study to Monitor Brain Changes of RTg4510 Mice Related Tauopathy Suppressed With/without Doxycycline

Dewen Yang¹, Zhiyong Xie¹, David Caouette², Carol Hicks², Anthony Millici², David Raunig³

Previous published paper demonstrated that the mutant tau in transgenic rTg4510 mice could be suppressed by Doxycycline. We designed a longitudinal MRI study to follow up brain volume changes to investigate the effect of Doxycycline in rTg4510 mice brain. A significant genotype effect (rTg4510 vs wt) was observed with the lateral ventricle volume (p< 0.0001). The lateral ventricle volume correlated well with the degree of hyperphosphorylated Tau staining. The increased lateral ventricle volume was early indicator for Tauopathy progression.