A gene - ApoE - has been linked to increased risk of Alzheimer\'s. Carrying cert

Question

A gene - ApoE - has been linked to increased risk of Alzheimer's. Carrying certain alleles of this gene increase the risk of Alzheimer's. However, it is not clear if this is due to a role for ApoE in the brain, or due to how this allele of ApoE also seems to be correlated with high blood pressure. How - using animal models, not humans - would you go about testing if high blood pressure causes damage to the hippocampus? How could you test if high blood pressure is sufficient to damage the hippocampus? How could you test if it is necessary?

Explanation / Answer

1. To determine if high blood pressure causes damage to hippocampus?

Experimental design: Animals are divided into two groups with sufficient number of animals (sample size) for the test to have required power. One group receives a particular drug which increases the blood pressure in the group for a specific period of time and the other group remains the mock/vehicle treated group. After a certain duration of time sacrifice the animals and screen for hippocampus damage.

2. How could you test if high blood pressure alone is sufficient to damage the hippocampus?

Experimental design: Two types of animals should be used for this experiment.

Type I- Animals with normal ApoE allele

and Type II- Animals with risk associated ApoE allele.

and follow the same experimental design as followed in the previous answer.

This experiment will tell us if ApoE allele is linked with high blood pressure and hippocampus damage.

Thank you.

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