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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2024.01.27.577088

Brain Vasculature Accumulates Tau and Is Spatially Related to Tau Tangle Pathology in Alzheimer's Disease

Hoglund, Z.·Ruiz-Uribe, N.·del Sastre, E.·Woost, B.·Bailey, J.·Hyman, B.·Bennett, R.·Zwang, T. J.
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Abstract

Insoluble pathogenic proteins accumulate along blood vessels in conditions of cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), exerting a toxic effect on vascular cells and impacting cerebral homeostasis. In this work we provide new evidence from three-dimensional human brain histology that tau protein, the main component of neurofibrillary tangles, can similarly accumulate along brain vascular segments. We quantitatively assessed n=6 Alzheimers disease (AD), and n=6 normal aging control brains and saw that tau-positive blood vessel segments were present in all AD cases. Tau-positive vessels are enriched for tau at levels higher than the surrounding tissue and appear to affect arterioles across cortical layers (I-V). Further, vessels isolated from these AD tissues were enriched for N-terminal tau and tau phosphorylated at T181 and T217. Importantly, tau-positive vessels are associated with local areas of increased tau neurofibrillary tangles. This suggests that accumulation of tau around blood vessels may reflect a local clearance failure. In sum, these data indicate tau, like amyloid beta, accumulates along blood vessels and may exert a significant influence on vasculature in the setting of AD.

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Hoglund, Z., Ruiz-Uribe, N., del Sastre, E., Woost, B., Bailey, J., Hyman, B., Bennett, R., Zwang, T. J.. 2024-01-28. Brain Vasculature Accumulates Tau and Is Spatially Related to Tau Tangle Pathology in Alzheimer's Disease. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.01.27.577088

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