| dc.description.abstract | Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia, currently afflicting over 44 million people worldwide. This number is projected to increase significantly in the coming years, yet much about the disease’s etiology remains a mystery, and no cure or preventative measures exist. Two potential risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease are chronic sleep loss and long-term consumption of an unhealthy, American-style diet. Harmful effects of both of these lifestyle factors on brain health, immune function, and cognition are often studied separately, but rarely in conjunction with one another. Collectively, the present studies investigated the impact of chronic sleep restriction and typical American-style diet consumption on cognitive impairment, anxiety-like behavior, central and peripheral inflammation and response to one intraperitoneal LPS injection, and amyloid-beta in wild-type mice. Alone, chronic sleep restriction was associated with sex-dependent changes in the inflammatory response to an intraperitoneal LPS injection. Typical American-style diet consumption was associated with increases in basal inflammation, as well as exacerbating the inflammatory response to an LPS injection. Further, consumption of the typical American-style diet was associated with cognitive impairment in females and increased amyloid-beta in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in males. Additionally, chronic sleep loss was associated with cognitive impairment in males. Given the increasing prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease, understanding how modifiable components of lifestyle can increase the risk of developing this devastating disease is essential. | en_US |
