Depletion of microglia immediately following traumatic brain injury in the pediatric rat: Implications for cellular and behavioral pathology.

Depletion of microglia immediately following traumatic brain injury in the pediatric rat: Implications for cellular and behavioral pathology. Exp Neurol. 2019 Apr 10;: Authors: Hanlon LA, Raghupathi R, Huh JW Abstract The inflammatory response is a significant component of the pathophysiology of pediatric traumatic brain injury. High levels of inflammatory mediators have been found in the cerebrospinal fluid of brain-injured children which have been linked to poor prognosis. Targeting aspects of the inflammatory response in the hopes of finding a viable post-injury therapeutic option has gained attention. Microglia are largely responsible for perpetuating the injury-induced inflammatory response but in the developing brain they play beneficial roles in both normal and disease states. Following closed head injury in the neonate rat, depletion of microglia with intracerebral injections of liposomes containing clodronate was associated with an increase in neurodegeneration in the early post-injury period (3 days) relative to those injected with empty liposomes suggestive of a decrease in clearance of dying cells. In sham-injured animals, microglia repopulated the clodrosome-mediated depleted brain regions over a period of 2-4 weeks and exhibited morphology typical of a resting phenotype. In brain-injured animals, the repopulated microglia in clodrosome-injected animals exhibited rod-like and amoeboid morphologies. However, fluoro-Ja...
Source: Experimental Neurology - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Exp Neurol Source Type: research