Rapamycin as a preventive intervention for Alzheimer’s disease in APOE4 carriers: targeting brain metabolic and vascular restoration

I agree it is worth measuring although my preferred lab that has a lot of biomarkers for a good price does not include it.

I also agree that the function of the immune system is key, but you do need some WBCs. My WBC is always under 3G (billions of cells per litre), at times it goes under 2G and then the lab has to phone me up.

You are right that people with higher WBC tend to be more inflamed. With me CRP is often too low to measure at 0.15mg/L.

My point about dosing is not daily vs weekly, but weekly vs fortnightly or even my high dose, but really infrequently.

In other words I don’t think we disagree much if at all.

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APOE4 impairs autophagy and Aβ clearance by microglial cells 2025

Tel-Aviv University

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a predominant form of dementia in elderly. In sporadic AD and in families with higher risk of AD, correlation with apolipoprotein E4 (APOE) allele expression has been found. How APOE4 induces its pathological effects is still unclear. Several studies indicate that autophagy, a major degradation pathway trough the lysosome, may be compromised in AD. Here we studied, the effects of APOE isoforms expression in microglia cells. By using an in-situ model, the clearance of Aβ plaques from brain sections of transgenic 5xFAD mice by the APOE expressing microglia was examined. The results show that APOE4 microglia has Impairment In clearance of insoluble Aβ plaques as compared to APOE3 and APOE2 microglia. Furthermore, APOE4 affect the uptake of soluble Aβ. We found that microglia expressing APOE4 exhibit reduced autophagic flux as compared to those expressing APOE3. The autophagy inhibitor chloroquine also blocked Aβ plaque uptake in APOE3 expressing cells. Furthermore, we found that APOE4 expressing microglia have altered mitochondrial dynamics protein expression, mitochondrial morphology and mitochondrial activity compared to those expressing APOE2, and APOE3. Rapamycin treatment corrected Mitochondrial Membrane Potential in APOE4-expressing cells. Taken together, these findings suggest that APOE4 impairs the activation of autophagy, mitophagy, and Aβ clearance and that autophagy-inducing treatments, such as rapamycin, can enhance autophagy and mitochondrial functions in APOE4 expressing microglia. Our results reveal a direct link between APOE4 to autophagy activity in microglia, suggesting that the pathological effects of APOE4 could be counteracted by pharmacological treatments inducing autophagy, such as rapamycin.

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