Occludin deficiency with BACE1 elevation in cerebral amyloid angiopathy

OBJECTIVE: A significant cause of spontaneous hemorrhages in the elderly is cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), which causes degeneration of cerebral vessels, but the mechanisms are unclear. METHODS: We isolated leptomeningeal vessels from rapidly autopsied brains (the average of postmortem intervals was 3.28 hours) from 9 patients with CAA and 10 age-matched controls, and used molecular, cell biology, and immunohistochemical approaches to examine β-site APP-cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE1) protein expression and enzymatic activities as well as tight junction molecular components in small- and medium-sized arteries of the cerebral cortex and leptomeninges. RESULTS: We not only identified that the cerebral vessels, including leptomeningeal and cortical vessels, synthesize and express BACE1, but also found a significant elevation of both BACE1 protein levels and enzymatic activities in leptomeningeal vessels from patients with CAA. Moreover, overexpression of BACE1 in endothelial cells resulted in a significant reduction of occludin, a tight junction protein in blood vessels. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that in addition to neurons, cerebral vascular cells express functional BACE1. Moreover, elevated vascular BACE1 may contribute to deficiency of occludin in cerebral vessels, which ultimately has a critical role in pathogenesis of CAA and its related hemorrhage.