Watch out, there is no reliable Mouse Model for Alzheimer's. I was deeply involved with mouse models at some point before quitting my phd in neuroscience and I quite remember that.
> Lithium was the only metal that differed significantly between people with and without mild cognitive impairment, often a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease.
Not a causative finding in humans but darn interesting
Wild mice do not get AD. Even if you let them achieve old age they do not develop the same brain plaques or tangles that are linked to Alzheimers.
Even if they did you'd have to run huge samples then do post testing necropsies to see which mice had AD which which didn't, then filter your data, then try to find results in what remains.
Otherwise you can inject the mice with a chemical known to cause AD, which is not reliable on it's own, so you can get genetically modified mice which express _some_ of the known plaques and misfolds that are associated with human AD.
Animal testing is still, largely, a very unethical and cruel affair. AD testing in mice is especially fraught with hazard.
If you believe the paper, the authors were able to create symptoms and plaques similar to AD just by reducing lithium levels in the diet of these mice.
It's like kind of challenging to prove this kind of negative, and the supposed proof here comprises no more than pedigreed words on a page, but here consider the section "What constitutes a good model for AD?": https://sci-hub.se/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-01...
