Microglia-induced reactive astrocytes — toxic players in neurological disease?

Differential relationships of reactive astrocytes and microglia to fibrillar amyloid deposits in Alzheimer disease.

Although it is clear that astrocytes and microglia cluster around dense-core amyloid plaques in Alzheimer disease (AD), whether they are primarily attracted to amyloid deposits or are just reacting to plaque-associated neuritic damage remains elusive. We postulate that astrocytes and microglia may differentially respond to fibrillar amyloid β. Therefore, we quantified the size distribution of d...

Reactive astrocytes promote axonal remodeling and neurological recovery after stroke

Astrocytes and Microglia as Non-cell Autonomous Players in the Pathogenesis of ALS

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder that leads to a progressive muscle wasting and paralysis. The pathological phenotypes are featured by severe motor neuron death and glial activation in the lumbar spinal cord. Proposed ALS pathogenic mechanisms include glutamate cytotoxicity, inflammatory pathway, oxidative stress, and protein aggregation. However, ...

The role of glia in neurological disease

Glial cells form a network in the central nervous system to support neurons and interact with them. The glia consist essentially of astrocytes that help with the nutrition of neurons and react in some cases of injury, oligodendrocytes that produce myelin, and microglia that are derived from the haemopoietic system and are concerned with the immunological defense of the nervous system. Experimen...

Diversity in Reactive Astrocytes

Normal astrocytes in the adult undergo hypertrophy and proliferation and transform into reactive astrocytes following many types of central nervous system (CNS) injury (1–5). This process is termed astrogliosis and may result in the formation of a glial scar. Morphological studies on astrogliosis by neuroanatomists and pathologists at the beginning of this century focused on the most florid exa...