The results raise the possibility that depressive symptoms in older persons may be associated with risk of developing AD.

High intake of unsaturated, unhydrogenated fats may be protective against Alzheimer disease, whereas intake of saturated or trans-unsaturated (hydrogenated) fats may increase risk.

Transgenic mice in which the tetracycline transactivator (tTA) is driven by the forebrain-specific calcium-calmodulindependent kinase IIa promoter (CaMKIIa-tTA mice) are used to study the molecular genetics of many behaviors. These mice can be crossed with other transgenic mice carrying a transgene of interest coupled to the tetracycline-responsive promoter element to produce mice with forebrain-specific expression of the transgene under investigation. The value of using CaMKIIa-tTA mice to study behavior, however, is dependent on the CaMKIIatTA mice themselves lacking a behavioral phenotype with respect to the behaviors being studied. Here we present data that suggest CaMKIIa-tTA mice have a behavioral phenotype distinct from that of their wildtype (WT) littermates. Most strikingly, we find that CaMKIIa-tTA mice, both those with a C57BL/6NTac genetic background (B6-tTA) and those with a 129S6B6F1/Tac hybrid genetic background (F1-tTA), exhibit decreased locomotor activity compared with WT littermates that could be misinterpreted as altered anxiety-like behavior. Despite this impairment, neither B6-tTA nor F1-tTA mice perform differently than their WT littermates in two commonly used learning and memory paradigms -Pavlovian fear conditioning and Morris water maze. Additionally, we find data regarding motor coordination and balance to be mixed: B6-tTA mice, but not F1-tTA mice, exhibit impaired performance on the accelerating rotarod and both perform as well as their WT littermates on the balance beam.