Combatting Inequalities within Science and Forgetting Your Loved Ones
As I have mentioned in the past, the project I am working on examines the impact of sex and anxiety on Alzheimer’s disease (AD) mice. What my post doc is primarily concerned with is female mice. Starting in 2014, the NIH has rolled out policies to ensure sex balance in studies. In the past there has been very little research done on female mice due to concerns about the interference of the oestrous cycle; however, based on various meta analysis, mice tested throughout the hormone cycles display as much variability as male mice do. Furthermore, whether it is substance abuse or neurodegenerative diseases, females show varying levels of susceptibility and reactivity, and thus a balanced approach will only buttress our efforts to combat these issues. The NIH seeks to transform science by making sure health in the US is served best through rigorous sex-balanced inquiry. They are therefore working with grant reviewers and publishers to promote the publication of preclinical research on females animals.
The exclusion of women in preclinical research is “bad for science and bad for women”, Janine A. Clayton and Francis S. Collins write in the Nature article on NIH’s policies.
The Alzheimer’s Association reports in their annual statistics that 1 in 3 seniors dies from AD; every 66 seconds someone dies from the disease and it kills more than breast and prostate concer combined. Not only are these statistics psychologically disheartening, but so are the impactions for the economy. Based on the estimated costs to the nation, the Alzheimer's Association reports that the total annual payments for health care, long-term care and hospice care for people with the disease or other dementias are forecasted to undergo a four-fold increase both in government spending under medicare and medicaid, and in out-of-pocket spending- quantitatively, this is an increase from $259 billion in 2017 to more than $1.1 trillion in 2050. Many studies have agree that AD is more prevalent in females, although so much about the disease remains a frustrating enigma. It is clear, however, that we would be doing science and global health a disservice by neglecting half the population, for whom this research is even more relevant, simply because of convention or projected complications with hormonal science- come on, we are better than that.
Working in the Denny Lab has shed a lot of light on this struggle. As a majority female lab, I see my colleagues toiling away with rigorous science that for so long excluded their gender. I am therefore especially passionate to be working on such a pertinent issue.
The project I have recently been spending a lot of time on is the social memory behaviour tests. A senior who works in my lab created a social behaviour paradigm where female mice are presented familiar and novel male and female mice, and their behaviour is recorded on the ANY-maze software, which is aN advanced video tracking software. As you can see in the photos below, we put two cups in a box- in one of them we put an familiar/novel mouse and the other is left empty. We then introduce an AD- or AD+ mouse (refer to the next article for further information on how we determine these genotypes) in the box and record their interactions for 10 minutes. The degree of sniffing is inversely proportional to the strength of their memory, i.e the better their social memory, the less interested they will be in the familiar mouse and the less they will sniff them.
It is heartbreaking to even think about your loved ones forgetting who you are through a disease. Testing social memory in mice is a basic, but crucial step towards understanding the origins of this ordeal. Stay tuned to see where the project goes next semester!
Sources:
https://www.nature.com/news/policy-nih-to-balance-sex-in-cell-and-animal-studies-1.15195\
https://www.alz.org/facts/