Administration of Aripiprazole Alleviates Memory Impairment and Restores Damaged Glutamatergic System in 5xfad Mice

Many patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) also have psychosis, and it has been reported that these patients have more severely impaired cognitive functions than patients without psychosis. The glutamatergic system in the brain is known to play an important role in memory and learning in the neural circuits. However, there has been limited research on how antipsychotic drugs affect the glutamatergic system of AD. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the effects of aripiprazole on the glutamatergic system in an animal model of AD using functional molecular imaging. In this study, 5xFAD mice were used as the animal model. At the age of 5 months, the mice were divided into wild-type, vehicle control, and aripiprazole-treated groups (n = 6 per group). The aripiprazole-treated group was administered aripiprazole for 2 months at a dose of 1 mg·kg−1·day−1. At 7 months of age, the animals underwent behavioral tests and glutamate positron emission tomography (PET) scans. The aripiprazole-treated group exhibited alleviated memory impairment in a novel object recognition test. Moreover, this group displayed 7–8