ITGAM and Alzheimer disease: We observed a marked reduction of CD11b gene expression levels in the 3-month-old 3xTg-AD animals (~55% in the cortex and ~65% in the hippocampus, p < 0.01), together with that of CX3CR1 (~56% cortex and ~55% hippocampus, p < 0.05) and MFG-E8 (~89% cortex and ~80% hippocampus, p < 0.01) that disappeared in older animals (Figure 3).