Plaque-ridden 5xFAD mice were no better at fending off an intracerebral herpes virus infection than their wild-type counterparts. The virus was not to be found within Aβ plaques and did not spur plaques to form.
In a mouse model of cortical multiple sclerosis, microglia and monocytes swooped in to gobble up synapses when dendritic calcium rose. Spines grew back once inflammation subsided.
People who carry the ApoE4 variant are more likely to succumb to the virus. In vitro, SARS-CoV-2 infects more ApoE4 than ApoE3 brain cells. Astrocytes were activated, neurons degenerated.
Some people with severe COVID-19 have neurovascular injury and elevated markers of neural damage in their blood and CSF. What’s going on in their brains?
Aging macrophages and microglia poorly burn glucose and enter an inflammatory state. Revving their metabolism preserved synapses and memory in mice. What does prostaglandin have to do with it?
By tracing the transcriptomes of neurons that wither early and late in the course of Alzheimer’s disease, researchers peg subpopulations of excitatory neurons in entorhinal cortex as selectively vulnerable to tau. Reactive astrocytes aid and abet.
In cultured cells, lysosomal activity was necessary to enable tau seeds to break out of internalized exosomes and trigger the aggregation of tau in the cytosol.
Overexpressing the endosomal activator in neurons not only caused those organelles to swell, but also bungled synaptic transmission, goaded hyperphosphorylation of tau, and destroyed cholinergic neurons.