Group housing with young mice relieves Alzheimer’s disease behaviors in aging mice

Y.-L. Zhang, J. Zhang, H. Lu, J. Tang, J.-L. Luo, H.-P. Long, J.-C. Li, S.-L. Shi

Department of Neurology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China. ssl_1964@163.com

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• Neurology

OBJECTIVE: Due to the increase in human life expectancy, a higher number of individuals are experiencing age-related cognitive impairments. Therefore, it is important to investigate the methods to tackle the effects of aging.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: The mice were divided into the following groups: the aging mice (male, 20 months) and young mice (male, 2 months) were pairing-housed together in the same cage and lasted for at least one month (Aging-Young). The following tests were performed for the mice in different groups: Open field test, Morris water maze (MWM) test, Contextual fear conditioning test, Novel Object Recognition (NOR) test, Pain threshold test, Olfactory habituation/dishabituation test, T-maze test, Electrophysiological recordings.
RESULTS: In this study, we housed aging and young mice together, and found that the paired housing for one-month improved the learning and memory of the aging mice. These mice exhibited better performance on the Morris water maze (MWM) test, a longer freezing duration in the contextual fear conditioning test, a higher alternation rate in the T-maze test, and an increased preference for novel objects in the novel object recognition (NOR) test. The paired housing with young mice also improved the impaired long-term potentiation (LTP) in aging mice.
CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that the paired housing with young mice has beneficial effects on learning and memory of aging mice. The manipulation of the systemic environment may, therefore, provide a new strategy for aging rejuvenation.

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