Behavioral impairments are linked to neuroinflammation in mice with Cerebral Cavernous Malformation disease.

BACKGROUND

Cerebral Cavernous Malformations (CCMs) are neurovascular abnormalities in the central nervous system (CNS) caused by loss of function mutations in KRIT1 (CCM1), CCM2, or PDCD10 (CCM3) genes. One of the most common symptoms in CCM patients is associated with motor disability, weakness, seizures, stress, and anxiety, and the extent of the symptom or symptoms may be due to the location of the lesion within the CNS or whether multiple lesions are present. Previous studies have primarily focused on understanding the pathology of CCM using animal models. However, more research has yet to explore the potential impact of CCM lesions on behavioral deficits in animal models, including effects on short-term and long-term memory, motor coordination, and function.

METHODS

We used the accelerating RotaRod test to assess motor and coordination deficits. We also used the open field test to assess locomotor activity and pathology-related behavior and Pavlovian fear conditioning to assess short-and long-term memory deficits. Our behavioral studies were complemented by proteomics, histology, immunofluorescence, and imaging techniques. We found that neuroinflammation is crucial in behavioral deficits in male and female mice with neurovascular CCM lesions ( ).

RESULTS

Functional behavior tests in male and female mice revealed that CCM lesions cause sudden motor coordination deficits associated with the manifestation of profound neuroinflammatory lesions. Our findings indicate that maturation of CCM lesions in mice also experienced a significant change in short- and long-term memory compared to their littermate controls, mice. Proteomic experiments reveal that as CCM lesions mature, there is an increase in pathways associated with inflammation, coagulation, and angiogenesis, and a decrease in pathways associated with learning and plasticity. Therefore, our study shows that mice display a wide range of behavioral deficits due to significant lesion formation in their central nervous system and that signaling pathways associated with neuroinflammation and learning impact behavioral outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study found that CCM animal models exhibited behavioral impairments such as decreased motor coordination and amnesia. These impairments were associated with the maturation of CCM lesions that displayed a neuroinflammatory pattern.