TY - JOUR T1 - Time Courses of Cortical Glucose Metabolism and Microglial Activity Across the Life Span of Wild-Type Mice: A PET Study JF - Journal of Nuclear Medicine JO - J Nucl Med SP - 1984 LP - 1990 DO - 10.2967/jnumed.117.195107 VL - 58 IS - 12 AU - Matthias Brendel AU - Carola Focke AU - Tanja Blume AU - Finn Peters AU - Maximilian Deussing AU - Federico Probst AU - Anna Jaworska AU - Felix Overhoff AU - Nathalie Albert AU - Simon Lindner AU - Barbara von Ungern-Sternberg AU - Peter Bartenstein AU - Christian Haass AU - Gernot Kleinberger AU - Jochen Herms AU - Axel Rominger Y1 - 2017/12/01 UR - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/58/12/1984.abstract N2 - Contrary to findings in the human brain, 18F-FDG PET shows cerebral hypermetabolism of aged wild-type (WT) mice relative to younger animals, supposedly due to microglial activation. Therefore, we used dual-tracer small-animal PET to examine directly the link between neuroinflammation and hypermetabolism in aged mice. Methods: WT mice (5–20 mo) were investigated in a cross-sectional design using 18F-FDG (n = 43) and translocator protein (TSPO) (18F-GE180; n = 58) small-animal PET, with volume-of-interest and voxelwise analyses. Biochemical analysis of plasma cytokine levels and immunohistochemical confirmation of microglial activity were also performed. Results: Age-dependent cortical hypermetabolism in WT mice relative to young animals aged 5 mo peaked at 14.5 mo (+16%, P < 0.001) and declined to baseline at 20 mo. Similarly, cortical TSPO binding increased to a maximum at 14.5 mo (+15%, P < 0.001) and remained high to 20 mo, resulting in an overall correlation between 18F-FDG uptake and TSPO binding (R = 0.69, P < 0.005). Biochemical and immunohistochemical analyses confirmed the TSPO small-animal PET findings. Conclusion: Age-dependent neuroinflammation is associated with the controversial observation of cerebral hypermetabolism in aging WT mice. ER -