Cited by 422Neuroinflammation and Neurodegeneration MechanismsClusterin in disease pathologyExercise and Physiological Responses

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 71 of the 71 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; 4 of the 33 sources its claims cite were checked for support.

Exercise plasma boosts memory and dampens brain inflammation via clusterin

Open access

Abstract

Physical exercise is generally beneficial to all aspects of human and animal health, slowing cognitive ageing and neurodegeneration 1. The cognitive benefits of physical exercise are tied to an increased plasticity and reduced inflammation within the hippocampus 2-4, yet little is known about the factors and mechanisms that mediate these effects. Here we show that 'runner plasma', collected from voluntarily running mice and infused into sedentary mice, reduces baseline neuroinflammatory gene expression and experimentally induced brain inflammation. Plasma proteomic analysis revealed a concerted increase in complement cascade inhibitors including clusterin (CLU). Intravenously injected CLU binds to brain endothelial cells and reduces neuroinflammatory gene expression in a mouse model of acute brain inflammation and a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease. Patients with cognitive impairment who participated in structured exercise for 6 months had higher plasma levels of CLU. These findings demonstrate the existence of anti-inflammatory exercise factors that are transferrable, target the cerebrovasculature and benefit the brain, and are present in humans who engage in exercise.

Verifying this paper

8 of 9 steps done · this page updates itself — you can leave and come back

  1. Registry recordVerified
  2. Full textRead the full text
  3. Reference list70 references found
  4. Reference checkChecking each cited work — 71 of 71
  5. StatisticsRecomputed
  6. Claims114 claims anchored to a quote
  7. Cited sourcesChecked
  8. Self-checkChecked
  9. VerificationFindings verified

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1038/s41586-021-04183-x

Cites

71 of 71 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

64 Own result · 18 Not checked yet · 17 Own method · 13 Own interpretation · 1 Supported · 1 Partly supported · accuracy not yet measured

Verify all 29 references — free account

Show all 44 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 32
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 44
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 4
70 of 70
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The rise in plasma CLU among patients after the exercise program is caused by the exercise itself rather than by other changes over time.

    “Patients with cognitive impairment who participated in structured exercise for 6 months had higher plasma levels of CLU.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Before this study, changes in complement and coagulation cascades had not been implicated in exercise effects on brain neuroinflammation.

    “To our knowledge, changes in the complement and coagulation cascadeshave not been implicated in the effects of exercise and in reducing neuroinflammation within the brain.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The commercial aptamer-based proteomic platform accurately measures the targeted complement and coagulation proteins in human plasma.

    “we measured 8 out of the top 13 complement/coagulation proteins, including CLU identified in mice, using a commercial aptamer-based proteomic platform in 20 veterans with amnestic mild cognitive impairment before and 6 months after a physical exercise intervention.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The complement and coagulation protein changes seen after exercise in humans reflect the same biology as the changes observed in mice.

    “Consistent with the findings in mice, CLU was significantly increased and FX decreased in the patients who exercised”
4 of 4

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

3 of 3

Citations

Cites

Show all 70 references

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 401–421 of 421

Metadata

Authors
De Miguel, Z., Khoury, N., Betley, M. J., Lehallier, B., Willoughby, D., Olsson, N., Yang, A. C., Hahn, O., Lu, N., Vest, R. T., Bonanno, L. N., Yerra, L., Zhang, L., Saw, N. L., Fairchild, J. K., Lee, D., Zhang, H., McAlpine, P. L., Contrepois, K., Shamloo, M., Elias, J. E., Rando, T. A., & Wyss-Coray, T.
Affiliations
  • Stanford Medicine (US)
  • VA Palo Alto Health Care System (US)
  • Stanford University (US)
Venue
Nature
Published
2021-12-08
Volume
600
Issue
7889
Pages
494-499
ISSN
  • 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-4687
OpenAlex
W4200434404
Cited by
422
References
70
Citations by year
2026: 67 · 2025: 116 · 2024: 100 · 2023: 83 · 2022: 54 · 2021: 2
FWCI
23.95
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (I01 BX001319)
  • National Institute on Aging (F32AG067652, R01AG047820, P01AG036695, P30AG066515, R01AG071783)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Neurology › Neuroinflammation and Neurodegeneration Mechanisms
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Oncology › Clusterin in disease pathology
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology (medical) › Exercise and Physiological Responses
Keywords
physical activity, plasma, clusterin, neuroinflammation, Alzheimer's disease, cognitive aging, hippocampus, plasma proteomics, brain endothelial cells, voluntary running, sedentary mice, cognitive impairment
MeSH terms
Alzheimer Disease, Animals, Encephalitis, Humans, Proteomics, Endothelial Cells, Clusterin, Mice

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-05, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-05 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Cited sources are checked with a language model’s help (gpt-6-sol).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review