Abstract
With many countries turning ‘grey’ and facing an issue with aging populations, the risk of developing one form of neurodegenerative disease is increasing. Dementia, being the most common syndrome resulting from neurodegeneration, severely affects memory and cognitive functions. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disorder, with an estimated 615,000 new cases will be added to the existing 5.7 million by 2030 (Alkasir et al., 2017).
In the current study, we establish a sporadic AD-like rat model by injecting STZ intracerebrally. Stool samples were collected at two time points; after three weeks for the acute stage, and 3 months for the chronic stage. Behavioral results show a significant difference in the working memory of the acute and chronic STZ-induced sAD-like rats when compared to age matched control groups. 16S rRNA sequencing on 18 samples revealed that Alpha diversity showed a significant difference between the STZ-induced sAD-like groups and control groups (p-value
In conclusion, this project did not align with the reported literature in all aspects, although there was a decrease in the Faith PD alpha diversity index, no significant differences were observed in the beta diversity index and relative abundance of bacteria among the groups. That could be due to the small number of samples used within each group.
Future work should increase sample size to produce statistically significant results. In addition, it is advisable to supplement the fecal samples collected from our experimental groups with CSF to add biomarker detection to correlate with bacterial taxa discovered.
School
School of Sciences and Engineering
Department
Biotechnology Program
Degree Name
MS in Biotechnology
Graduation Date
Summer 6-15-2023
Submission Date
2-23-2023
First Advisor
Ahmed Abdellatif
Second Advisor
Ahmed Moustafa
Committee Member 1
Asma Amleh
Committee Member 2
Ramy Aziz
Extent
55 p.
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Institutional Review Board (IRB) Approval
Not necessary for this item
Recommended Citation
APA Citation
Heiba, H.
(2023).Association of Gut Microbiota Composition with Alzheimer’s-Like Disease in A Rat Model [Master's Thesis, the American University in Cairo]. AUC Knowledge Fountain.
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/2074
MLA Citation
Heiba, Hana. Association of Gut Microbiota Composition with Alzheimer’s-Like Disease in A Rat Model. 2023. American University in Cairo, Master's Thesis. AUC Knowledge Fountain.
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/2074