Influence of environmental enrichment and depleted uranium on behaviour, cholesterol and acetylcholine in apolipoprotein E-deficient mice.

Alzheimer's disease is associated with genetic risk factors, of which the apolipoprotein E (ApoE) is the most prevalent, and is affected by environmental factors that include education early in life and exposure to metals. The industrial and military use of depleted uranium (DU) resulted in an increase of its deposition in some areas and led to a possible environmental factor. The present study aims to ascertain the effects on the behaviour and the metabolism of cholesterol and acetylcholine of ApoE-/- mice exposed to enriched environment (EE) and exposed to DU (20 mg/L) for 14 weeks. Here we show that ApoE-/- mice were unaffected by the EE and their learning and memory were similar to those of the non-enriched ApoE-/- mice. ApoE-/- mice showed a significant decrease in total (-16 %) and free (-16 %) cholesterol in the entorhinal cortex in comparison to control wild-type mice. Whatever the housing conditions, the exposure to DU of ApoE-/- mice impaired working memory, but had no effect on anxiety-like behaviour, in comparison to control ApoE-/- mice. The exposure of ApoE-/- mice to DU also induced a trend toward higher total cholesterol content in the cerebral cortex (+15 %) compared to control ApoE-/- mice. In conclusion, these results demonstrate that enriched environment does not ameliorate neurobehaviour in ApoE-/- mice and that ApoE mutation induced specific effects on the brain cholesterol. These findings also suggested that DU exposure could modify the pathology in this ApoE model, with no influence of housing conditions.