Quantitative Analysis Of Lipid Debris Accumulation Caused By Cuprizone Induced Myelin Degradation In Different Cns Areas

Publication date: Available online 8 January 2018
Source:Brain Research Bulletin
Author(s): Attila Ozsvár, Róbert Szipőcs, Zoltán Ozsvár, Judith Baka, Pál Barzó, Gábor Tamás, Gábor Molnár
Degradation of myelin sheath is thought to be the cause of neurodegenerative diseases, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), but definitive agreement on mechanism of how myelin is lost is currently lacking. Autoimmune initiation of MS has been recently questioned by proposing that the immune response is a consequence of oligodendrocyte degeneration. To study the process of myelin breakdown, we induced demyelination with cuprizone and applied coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy, a non-destructive label-free method to image lipid structures in living tissue. We confirmed earlier results showing a brain region dependent myelin destructive effect of cuprizone. In addition, high resolution in situ CARS imaging revealed myelin debris forming lipid droplets alongside myelinated axon fibers. Quantification of lipid debris with a custom-made software for segmentation and three dimensional reconstruction revealed brain region dependent accumulation of lipid drops inversely correlated to the thickness of myelin sheaths. Finally, we confirmed that in situ CARS imaging is applicable to living human brain tissue in brain slices derived from a patient. Thus, CARS microscopy is potent tool for quantitative monitoring of myelin degradation at unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution during oligodendrocyte damage. We think that accumulation of lipid drops around degrading myelin might be instrumental in triggering subsequent inflammatory processes.



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