Aging spinal cord microglia become phenotypically heterogeneous and preferentially target motor neurons and their synapses.

ABSTRACT: Microglia have been found to acquire unique region-dependent deleterious features with age and diseases that contribute to neuronal dysfunction and degeneration in the brain. However, it remains unknown whether microglia exhibit similar phenotypic heterogeneity in the spinal cord. Here, we performed a regional analysis of spinal cord microglia in 3-, 16-, 23-, and 30-month-old mice. Using light and electron microscopy, we discovered that spinal cord microglia acquire an increasingly activated phenotype during the course of aging regardless of regional location. However, aging causes microglia in the ventral but not dorsal horn to lose their spatial organization. Aged ventral horn microglia also aggregate around the somata of motor neurons and increase their contacts with motor synapses, wh

SUBMITTER: Castro RW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10773989 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature