Fig. 1

Sex effects on TSPO-PET signal in wild-type mice and mouse models of neurodegenerative diseases. Cortical TSPO-PET quantification is illustrated as a function of age for female (blue) and male (yellow) mice, analyzed by mixed linear models, together with ¹⁸F-GE-180 TSPO-PET group mean images (n = 5–32) at different ages in a horizontal plane projected upon an MRI standard template. Serial scans in the upper part of the figure are indicated by connected data points. 95% confidence intervals are indicated in grey. a Female wild-type mice showed a stronger increase of TSPO-PET SUVR than males (p < 0.001) from 2.5 to 12.5 months. b Female App^NL-G-F mice with Aβ pathology already showed higher SUVR of TSPO-PET at 2.5 months and stronger increases of TSPO-PET SUVR from 2.5 to 10 months as compared to males (p = 0.0048). c P301S tau transgenic mice showed no significant sex × time interaction on TSPO-PET SUVR with age at time of scanning (p = 0.673). TSPO—translocator protein, PET—positron emission tomography, MRI—magnetic resonance imaging, SUVR—standardized uptake value ratio, Aβ—beta amyloid, M—months