Western blotting was carried out according to the manufacturer’s instructions and previous studies [30 (link), 31 (link)]. Cerebral cortex and hippocampus extracts were loaded onto 10-16% Tris/tricine SDS gels and transferred to nitrocellulose membranes prior to overnight incubation with one of the following primary antibodies: BACE, BACE1, sAPPβ, PS1, NCT, Aph-1α, Pen-2, p-Ser199, p-Ser202, p-Thr205, p-Thr231, p-Ser396, p-Ser404, HT7, p25, p35, and Cdk5 (purchased from Abcam, Cambridge, MA, USA). MAP1, SYP, and PSD95 were obtained from Cell Signaling Technology, Inc. USA. Mouse monoclonal anti-IL-1β, mouse monoclonal anti-MMP-2, mouse monoclonal anti-MMP-9, and goat anti-mouse IgG labeled with biotin were procured from Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Inc. USA. Rabbit anti-mouse β-actin was also obtained from Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Inc. USA. The optical densities of the specific bands were achieved by image analysis software (HPIAS 2000, Tongji Qianping Company, Wuhan, China).