Cold-raising unmasks sleep disruption in a Drosophila Alzheimer’s disease model

TL;DR

Raising fruit flies in cold temperatures reveals sleep problems in a model of Alzheimer's disease, offering a new way to study the link between sleep and the disease.

Contribution

Cold-raising reveals sleep deficits in a Drosophila Alzheimer's model, enabling new studies on sleep-AD interactions.

Findings

Cold-raising unmasks sleep duration deficits in a Drosophila Alzheimer's model.

Sleep fragmentation and latency are also increased in the cold-raised model.

The model can be used to study metabolic and proteostatic links between sleep and AD.

Abstract

Chronic sleep loss is a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD), and reduced and fragmented sleep is increasingly appreciated as an early-onset diagnostic and potential therapeutic target for AD. However, robustly modeling AD-like sleep deficits in fruit flies has often been challenging. We report that cold-raising unmasks deficits in sleep duration, fragmentation, and latency in one such model pan-neuronally expressing a highly pathogenic AD-associated amyloid species. This sensitized model provides a promising platform for identifying potential metabolic, proteostatic, glymphatic, and other candidate mediators bidirectionally linking sleep and AD.

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