A collision happens. Someone is hurt, a head injury, a concussion. Just as the first responders arrive to help the person, inside the brain, another “crew” of responders is busy clearing debris and repairing injured tissue.
This crew is called the microglia – the immune cells of the central nervous system. Microglia are imperative to maintaining neuronal function by clearing toxins in the brain and central nervous system. But if they are overactive, they can damage neurons instead and, in some cases, have been found to promote the progression of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
During development, there are known sex-related differences in how microglia function. But into adulthood, there was thought to be less variation in how they behave. New research from the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester finds that microglia function may not be as similar across sex as once thought. This discovery could have broad implications for how diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are approached and studied, and points to the necessity of having gender specific research. It is already known that more women are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and more men are diagnosed with Parkinson’s but it’s unclear as to why.
“It is a fortuitous finding that has repercussions for what people are doing in the field, but also helps us understand microglia biology in a way that people may not have been expecting,” said Ania Majewska, PhD, professor of Neuroscience and the senior author of a study out today