Evidence for reduced neurogenesis in the aging human hippocampus despite stable stem cell markers

By K. Mathews, Katherine M. Allen, D. Boerrigter, H. Ball, C. Shannon Weickert, K. Double. 2017

110 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Reduced neurogenesis in the aging mammalian hippocampus has been linked to cognitive deficits and increased risk of dementia. We utilized postmortem human hippocampal tissue from 26 subjects aged 18–88 years to investigate changes in expression of six genes representing different stages of neurogenesis across the healthy adult lifespan. Progressive and significant decreases in mRNA levels of the proliferation marker Ki67 (MKI67) and the immature neuronal marker doublecortin (DCX) were found in the healthy human hippocampus over the lifespan. In contrast, expression of genes for the stem cell marker glial fibrillary acidic protein delta and the neuronal progenitor marker eomesodermin was unchanged with age. These data are consistent with a persistence of the hippocampal stem cell population with age. Age‐associated expression of the proliferation and immature neuron markers MKI67 and DCX, respectively, was unrelated, suggesting that neurogenesis‐associated processes are independently altered at these points in the development from stem cell to neuron. These data are the first to demonstrate normal age‐related decreases at specific stages of adult human hippocampal neurogenesis.

Subfields: Developmental Neuroscience, Molecular Biology

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Citations in the corpus

Human hippocampal neurogenesis drops sharply in children to undetectable levels in adults (2018, neutral): “It has been suggested that a few new neurons continue to be produced in adults based on DCX expression detected by PCR or western blot 14,29,30 .”
The role of adult hippocampal neurogenesis in brain health and disease (2018, methodology): “Further evidence of adult hippocampal neurogenesis in humans was provided by immunohistochemical analysis, retrospective birth dating methods using the level of (14)C [9], double-immunohistochemical analyses [7], and gene expression associated with neurogenesis [10].”
Human adult neurogenesis: evidence and remaining questions (2018, unknown): “Several earlier studies have used DCX to assess adult neurogenesis in humans (Dennis et al., 2016; Galán et al., 2017; Knoth et al., 2010; Liu et al., 2008; Mathews et al., 2017).”