Maria Teresa Ferretti

University of Zurich | UZH · IREM (Institute for Regenerative Medicine)

Introduction: Successful development of effective β-site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE1)-targeted therapies for early stages of Alzheimer's disease requires biomarker-guided intervention strategies. Methods: We investigated whether key biological factors such as sex, apolipoprotein E (APOE ε4) allele, and age affect longitudi...

Introduction: The longitudinal trajectories of functional brain dynamics and the impact of genetic risk factors in individuals at risk for Alzheimer's disease are poorly understood. Methods: In a large-scale monocentric cohort of 224 amyloid stratified individuals at risk for Alzheimer's disease, default mode network (DMN) resting state function...

Introduction: Blood-based biomarkers of pathophysiological brain amyloid β (Aβ) accumulation, particularly for preclinical target and large-scale interventions, are warranted to effectively enrich Alzheimer's disease clinical trials and management. Methods: We investigated whether plasma concentrations of the Aβ1-40/Aβ1-42 ratio, assessed using...

INTRODUCTION Observational multimodal neuroimaging studies indicate sex differences in Alzheimer's disease pathophysiological markers. METHODS Positron emission tomography brain amyloid load, neurodegeneration (hippocampus and basal forebrain volumes adjusted to total intracranial volume, cortical thickness, and 2-deoxy-2-[fluorine-18]fluoro-D-gluc...

Alzheimer disease (AD) is characterized by wide heterogeneity in cognitive and behavioural syndromes, risk factors and pathophysiological mechanisms. Addressing this phenotypic variation will be crucial for the development of precise and effective therapeutics in AD. Sex-related differences in neural anatomy and function are starting to emerge, and...

Although Alzheimer disease (AD) is recognized as a public health priority by the WHO 1 and is expected to affect 90 million people worldwide by 2050 (ref. 2), the condition remains incurable and all clinical trials in AD conducted in the past decade have failed. Heterogeneity of disease manifestation and progression among patients has been identifi...

Introduction Observational multimodal neuroimaging studies indicate sex differences in Alzheimer's disease pathophysiological markers. Methods Positron emission tomography brain amyloid load, neurodegeneration (hippocampus and basal forebrain volumes adjusted to total intracranial volume, cortical thickness, and 2-deoxy-2-[fluorine-18]fluoro-D-glu...

Introduction: Several neurodegenerative brain proteinopathies, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), are associated with cerebral deposition of insoluble aggregates of α-synuclein. Previous studies reported a trend toward increased cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) α-synuclein (α-syn) concentrations in AD compared with other neurodegenerative diseases and h...

The Precision Neurology development process implements systems theory with system biology and neurophysiology in a parallel, bidirectional research path: a combined hypothesis-driven investigation of systems dysfunction within distinct molecular, cellular, and large-scale neural network systems in both animal models as well as through tests for the...

Background: Strong genetic and epidemiological evidence points to a crucial role of the immune system in the development of Alzheimer disease (AD). CD3+ T lymphocytes have been described in brains of postmortem AD patients and in transgenic models of AD-like cerebral amyloidosis and tau pathology. However, the occurrence of T cells in AD brains is...

The European Commission has published guidelines to stimulate a more rational antimicrobial use in veterinary medicine and to monitor antibiotic us e in food - producing animals [1]. The EMA has proposed a novel approach based on the Defined Daily Doses ( DDD ) to quantify antibiotic use [2]. The aim of this study is to evaluate antibiotic consumpt...

Many diverse factors, ranging from stress to infections, can perturb brain homeostasis and alter the physiological activity of microglia, the immune cells of the central nervous system. Microglia play critical roles in the process of synaptic maturation and brain wiring during development. Any perturbation affecting microglial physiological functio...

Cerebral beta-amyloidosis, one of the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), elicits a well-characterized, microglia-mediated local innate immune response. In contrast, it is not clear whether cells of the adaptive immune system, in particular T-cells, react to cerebral amyloidosis in AD. Even though parenchymal T-cells have been descr...

L’uso razionale del farmaco veterinario è fondamentale per limitare l’antibioticoresistenza e preservare l’efficacia di antibiotici importanti per l’uomo (CIAs). Questo studio descrittivo ha valutato il consumo e l’appropriatezza prescrittiva nell’UslUmbria2 per i comparti bovino e suino nel 2014. Il consumo del farmaco è stato valutato tramite il...

Introduction In Alzheimer’s disease, accumulation and pathological aggregation of amyloid β-peptide is accompanied by the induction of complex immune responses, which have been attributed both beneficial and detrimental properties. Such responses implicate various cell types of the innate and adaptive arm of the immunesystem, both inside the centra...

Serum antibodies against amyloid-β peptide (Aβ) in humans with or without diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) indicate the possibility of immune responses against brain antigens. In an unbiased screening for antibodies directed against brain proteins, we found in AD patients high serum levels of antibodies against the neuronal cytoskeletal protei...

In this review we highlight the evidence for an intracellular origin of Abeta (Aβ) amyloid peptides as well as the observations for a pathological accumulation of these peptides in Alzheimer's disease and Down syndrome, as well as in transgenic animal models. We deliberate on the controversy as to whether the intracellular Aβ immunoreactive materia...

A growing body of evidence indicates that inflammation is one of the earliest neuropathological events in Alzheimer's disease. Accordingly, we have recently shown the occurrence of an early, pro-inflammatory reaction in the hippocampus of young, three-month-old transgenic McGill-Thy1-APP mice in the absence of amyloid plaques but associated with in...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) neuropathology likely begins decades before clinical symptoms are manifested. Investigations on the early stages of the amyloid pathology are crucial for the discovery of diagnostic biomarkers or new therapeutic targets. Our transgenic (tg) animal models are most suitable to study early AD pathological events, as the pathol...

Lifelong use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) has been shown to diminish the incidence of Alzheimer's disease (AD), suggesting a key role of inflammation in early stages of the pathology. While amyloid plaque-associated inflammation has been extensively studied in human and animal models, little is known about the inflammatory proce...

The occurrence of a plaque-dependent inflammation in Alzheimer's disease has been extensively documented in both human specimens and transgenic models of the disease. Since insoluble plaques are present in AD patients from early preclinical stages of the pathology, the point at which neuroinflammation first occurs in the progression of the AD patho...

At diagnosis, Alzheimer's disease (AD) brains are extensively burdened with plaques and tangles and display a degree of synaptic failure most likely beyond therapeutic treatment. It is therefore crucial to identify early pathological events in the progression of the disease. While it is not currently feasible to identify and study early, pre-clinic...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative pathology in which amyloid-beta (Abeta) peptide accumulates in different brain areas leading to deposition of plaques and a progressive decline of cognitive functions. After a decade in which a number of transgenic (Tg) mouse models mimicking AD-like amyloid-deposition pathology have been successfully...

Intracellular accumulation of beta-amyloid (Abeta) is one of the early features in the neuropathology of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Down's syndrome. This can be reproduced in cell and transgenic animal models of the AD-like amyloid pathology. In a transgenic rat model, our lab has previously shown that the intracellular accumulation of Abeta is s...

Occurrence and localization of receptor components of the glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) family ligands, the Ret receptor tyrosine kinase and the GDNF family receptor (GFR) alpha-1 to -3, were examined by immunohistochemistry in the normal human brainstem at fetal, neonatal, and adult age. Immunoreactive elements were detectable...