Selective alterations in CA1 spine morphology following dietary fructose intake.

Overview

1. Department of Anatomy and Histology, University of Veterinary Medicine,Budapest, Hungary
2. Institute for Animal Breeding, Nutrition and Laboratory Animal Science, István u. 2, Budapest, 1078 Hungary

Abstract

High fructose intake has been linked to metabolic and cognitive disturbances, yet its effects on hippocampal synaptic architecture remain unclear. We examined whether four weeks of fructose feeding alter metabolic parameters or CA1 synaptic ultrastructure in adult rats maintained on isocaloric AIN-93G diets containing fructose, glucose, or starch as the primary carbohydrate source. Serum biochemical and hormonal profiles showed only modest, diet-specific differences without major metabolic disruption. Quantitative electron microscopy revealed similar dendritic spine density, postsynaptic density length, perforated synapse frequency, and multisynaptic bouton density across groups, whereas fructose-fed rats displayed a small but significant reduction in spine area and an alteration in circularity. These localized geometric changes occurred without broader synaptic remodeling. Overall, our findings indicate that short-term fructose exposure under metabolically controlled, solid-diet conditions produces minimal metabolic and ultrastructural effects, in contrast to the pronounced disturbances reported in metabolically stressful paradigms, suggesting that structural consequences of fructose depend strongly on dietary context and metabolic load.

Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00429-026-03102-y.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Data

Datasets cited

• zenodo:18338177, at Zenodo; found in “Data availability”

Data availability

All datasets generated and analysed during the current study are openly available in the Zenodo repository at the following DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18338177.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Version 2, 28 September 2026

• Publisher: n/a → Springer Science+Business Media

Version 1, 28 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 7 authors, 8 keywords, 8 MeSH terms, 1 funder, 27 references.

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This paper

Kapiller, M., Marcello, G. M., Hazai, D., Andrásovszky, E., Sótonyi, P., Szabó, J., & Rácz, B. (2026). Selective alterations in CA1 spine morphology following dietary fructose intake. Brain structure & function, 231(5), 59. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-026-03102-y

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