Lifestyle shapes preclinical social and microglial deficits in an Alzheimer’s disease mouse model

Alzheimer’s disease has a long preclinical phase, during which no overt signs of the manifest disease are present, but subtle, usually non-specific changes are already detectable. Emerging early biomarkers underscore the importance of this phase for preventive measures including lifestyle interventions. As a reductionistic model for lifestyle factors, we used a novel enrichment paradigm in which App ^NL-G-F knock-in mice were continuously tracked until 7 months of age. Despite minimal plaque burden and no memory impairment at that age, there were early and progressive deficits in social parameters — such as following behavior, social interaction, and exploration – suggesting preclinical behavioral vulnerability. Altered correlations between adult neurogenesis and social parameters linked neural plasticity to preclinical behavior. Plasma profiling at 3 months identified early systemic shifts in markers of inflammation and apoptosis that predicted later cortical pathology. We found increased microglia coverage in more socially active animals. More actively exploring controls, but not App ^NL-G-F mice, exhibited more ramified and less amoeboid microglia, suggesting that AD pathology impairs immune surveillance at a very early stage. Single-cell RNA sequencing of hippocampal microglia revealed that enrichment dampened interferon-responsive microglia, which typically increase as amyloidosis advances. A shifted immune response was also measured by reduced transcripts related to antigen processing and presentation and by increased chemokine signaling. Our study demonstrates that the preclinical phase of AD is not silent, but even in a reductionistic knock-in model characterized by early interwoven preclinical changes in multiple domains, including brain plasticity, behavioral trajectories, sociality and immunity.