Virginia Research Day 2025

Graduate Student Research Biomedical

04 Measurement of Glucose Uptake in an Alzheimer’s Disease Rat Model Post Cranial Osteopathic Manipulation Using FDG-PET Imaging

There is an estimated 6.7 million Americans diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease, which is growing in prevalence each day. The mechanism of action and cause of this neurodegenerative disease is still uncertain. However, a popular theory amongst the scientific community is that the build-up of amyloid plaque causes downstream effects leading to the death of neurons on a massive scale. Research has also shown that amyloid beta impairs cerebral fluid circulation resulting in a decrease in clearance by the central nervous system’s lymphatic system. This not only increases the likelihood of the development of neuroinflammation but also decreases glucose uptake by the tissue. Currently, there lacks physiological and pharmacological mechanisms to assist and improve clearance, but mechanical manipulation by way of cranial osteopathic manipulative medicine/ therapy (COM) has shown to be effective. Previous 1 Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics, Virginia Tech 2 Edward Via, Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine 3 Virginia Tech Center for One Health Research 4 Virginia–Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, Virginia Tech De’Yana Hines 1,3 ; Hope Tobey2; Pamela VandeVord1; Blaise Costa 2,3,4 Corresponding author: deyanahines@vt.edu

experiments performed have shown that COM influences AD expression on the behavior level. Behavioral data collected from the MWM, NOR, and Open Field Test (OFT) assays were used to assess learning, memory, and spatial awareness in a cohort of aged and transgenic Fischer 344 18-month-old male and female rats. The cohorts were split by sex and treatment received creating four groups, male and female COM treated (M-COM, F-COM) and male and female untreated (M-UT, F-UT). COM was performed for 8 days with a professionally trained osteopathic doctor wearing FingerTPS’s nanosensor gloves to quantify the pressure applied to the occipital squama. Results demonstrated that aged COM treated rats showed less frantic and better memory associated behaviors in the NOR and OFT assays. The transgenic COM-treated rats also showed a significant improvement in learning and memory based on their

distance traveled and velocity in the MWM assay. With these results in mind, we decided to investigate the changes glucose uptake for the aged Fischer 344 rats to assess molecular level changes. Using 6 rats from each treatment group, an injection of the FDG tracer was administered via tail-vein. Then the 60-minute static PET/CT scan was performed at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute’s Imaging Corp. Quantification and normalization of standard uptake was performed in PMOD, an image processing software. Using an atlas each rats’ brain region was segmented for individual analysis of tissue in that area. Averaged uptake values for each region per rat were normalized and compared to a control using a 2-way-ANOVA. Findings from this will depict differences in regional retention of the tracer between the treatment groups.

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2025 Research Recognition Day