Experiments using heterochronic parabionts, i.e. young and old animals connected surgically and hence developing a shared circulation, have shown that blood-borne factors, transferred from young to old mice and vice versa, play a role in influencing a range of health outcomes associated with advanced age. Previous work has explored the contributory role of plasma-derived factors in mediating such parabiotic effects, including those on aging-associated neural and behavioural impairments. Here, we wanted to identify possible influences that blood-borne cellular factors may have on age-related behavioural phenotypes. Towards this end, we subjected old BALB/c H-2^d mice to repetitive non-myeloablative bone marrow transplants (BMT) from young donor animals and assessed effects on behaviour and cognition. We detected expected age-related alterations in our behavioural assays but did not discern any obvious differences between old BMT mice and old control animals. Our study represents the first to look at possible behavioural and cognitive effects of heterochronic, non-myeloablative BMT. Future work should extend this study by including additional behavioural tests in the analysis, addressing whether beneficial effects of BMT may be detectable on other genetic backgrounds and reconciling our findings with those achieved by myeloablative BMT.

使用异时生物体的实验，即年轻和年老的动物通过手术连接并因此发展共享循环，表明血源性因素从年轻小鼠转移到老年小鼠，反之亦然，在影响与晚期小鼠相关的一系列健康结果方面发挥作用。年龄。先前的工作已经探索了血浆衍生因子在介导此类联生效应中的促成作用，包括与衰老相关的神经和行为障碍的影响。在这里，我们想确定血源性细胞因素可能对与年龄相关的行为表型产生的影响。为此，我们对旧的 BALB/c H-2 ^d小鼠对来自年轻供体动物的重复非清髓性骨髓移植 (BMT) 进行了实验，并评估了对行为和认知的影响。我们在我们的行为分析中检测到预期的与年龄相关的改变，但没有发现老 BMT 小鼠和老对照动物之间的任何明显差异。我们的研究首次研究了异时性、非清髓性 BMT 的可能行为和认知影响。未来的工作应该通过在分析中包括额外的行为测试来扩展这项研究，解决是否可以在其他遗传背景上检测到 BMT 的有益影响，并将我们的发现与清髓性 BMT 实现的结果相协调。