Talk:Microglia

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Posassium.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:59, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jmitch2693.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:04, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Merging and copyright quesiton
I was bold and went ahead and merged Microglial cells into this page, because it is an identical topic. I hope no one minds that I didn't discuss it first! If you have any concerns, please let me know here or on my talk page. Also, some of the text I merged from the Microglial cells article seemed like it may have been copied from an external source, but I searched the internet and could not find anywhere with the same wording. If anyone knows where the material may be from, please indicate its copyright status and why we are allowed to use the text here. If it is from somewhere else, it may be a copyright violation. Wikipedia is not allowed to use copyrighted material. Thanks! delldot | talk 07:55, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Whoops, never mind, I found the source of the copyrighted material. It is from here, and has been removed.  delldot | talk 08:13, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Preliminary study cited
I am the secondary author of the study cited (Chubak, Bird et al.) While I was impressed to find myself in a google search, and link to this article, this study is only preliminary and we did not have a large n value. Due to lack of funding the study was not supported to conclusion. There is a possibility that our findings can be supported, however it should not be on this page until it is supported better.
 * Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the  link at the top. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to).  The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills.  New contributors are always welcome. --Arcadian 01:49, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Insults?
From the article: "Microglia are responsible for producing an inflammatory reaction to insults (Streit et al., 2004)" gosh, really? i'd love to see an article name/reference number or linkable source to this data... sounds like crazy voodoo to me, i didn't even know there was an inflammatory response to insults, let alone a glial cell connection. Until then, i will remain very wary of this briefly mentioned detail. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mwalle (talk • contribs) 02:25, 9 December 2006 (UTC).

Dear hagermanbot,

Pain can lead to activated microglia. Pain is insulting. This is a nice review http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=15755561&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_DocSum --82.35.234.119 05:02, 1 March 2007 (UTC)fps

Dear hagermanbot, The term "insult" here does not mean "offensive language" but rather means "injury". —Preceding unsigned comment added by dutchmaninvienna 149.148.244.109 (talk) 12:32, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

It says in the first sentence: "Microglia are a type of glial cells that are the resident macrophages of the brain and spinal cord". but arent there microglia in the retina? can someone add a litte text about microglia in the retina? here's a review i found with google scholar: J Leukoc Biol. 2007 Jun;81(6):1345-51. Epub 2007 Apr 3./Microglia activation in retinal degeneration. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.199.175.216 (talk) 11:54, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

to solve I think it could be changed to "...macrophages of the central nervous system" since the retina develops from the brain and therefore is a part of the CNS. But then it says this in the second part of the sentence so I think it's ok

62.224.249.202 (talk) 20:22, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Microglia not Glia?
The entry on Glia says that Microglia are not technnically glia. They are immune cells. Can someone resolve this discrepancy? Eperotao 15:29, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Response: I think there is no dubt and microglia is cosidered by the whole scientific community like glia. However, the origin of this cells is highly different from the rest of the neural (not neuronal) cells of the CNS, and are more related with immune cells. Considering this, it is fear to affirm that microglia "are not technnically glia".

Microglial cells origin
Just a comment: nowadays, the origin of microglia in the adult CNS is highly controversiala and monocytes or bone marrow cells seem to infitrate the CNS only after injury, disease or irradiation... However, during development myeloid cells migrate to the CNS parenchima and differentiate into microglial cells. For a recent review: J Neurochem. 2011 Sep 27. doi: 10.1111/j.1471-4159.2011.07504.x. Physiological roles of microglia during development. Pont-Lezica L, Béchade C, Belarif-Cantaut Y, Pascual O, Bessis A. About the controversial origin of microglia: Glia. 2011 Feb;59(2):177-87. Microglia in the CNS: immigrants from another world. Prinz M, Mildner A. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.82.86.142 (talk) 23:56, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Science News resource
Untangling the brain’s mess Staff Web edition: Friday, July 22nd, 2011 ... "A new study identifies the developing brain’s cleanup crew. As brains grow, nerve cells form an excess of connections, many of which need to be culled. In newborn mice, cells called microglia infiltrate the brain and remove these superfluous connections, called synapses, Italian researchers report online July 21 in Science.  These cells are known to slurp up debris after brain damage, but their new role in the developing brain is a surprise. The results may help researchers understand certain neurological disorders in which a brain has too many synapses." by Laura Sanders.

99.181.140.213 (talk) 04:41, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Science review article
Science 11 January 2013 Vol. 339 no. 6116 pp. 156-161 DOI: 10.1126/science.1227901 Review Microglia: Scapegoat, Saboteur, or Something Else? Adriano Aguzzi1,*Ben A. Barres2, Mariko L. Bennett2, http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6116/156.full

In particular, they say


 * Microglia are parenchymal tissue macrophages with delicate branching processes (“ramified,” or treelike) that include 10% of cells in the CNS. Unlike CNS macrophages found in the meninges, choroid plexus, and perivascular space, microglia derive from macrophages produced by primitive hematopoiesis in the yolk sac (5). These primitive macrophages migrate to the developing neural tube, where they give rise to microglia (6). BM-derived monocytes do not contribute to the mature microglial pool in the absence of conditioning irradiation to the CNS, suggesting that microglia are sustained by local progenitors (Fig. 1) (7, 8). Yolk sac–derived macrophages develop independently of Myb, a requisite transcription factor for stem cell development in the BM (9). Microglia and BM-derived macrophages thus represent two genetically distinct myeloid populations.

The current WP article, citing a 2006 article in Journal of Clinical Investigation, says:


 * Microglial cells differentiate in the bone marrow from hematopoietic stem cells, the progenitors of all blood cells. During hematopoiesis, some of these stem cells differentiate into monocytes and travel from the bone marrow to the brain, where they settle and further differentiate into microglia.[6]

In other words, this 2013 Science article says that microglia and bone marrow-derived cells are two different populations. Microglia are derived from microglia stem cells in the CNS. Bone marrow-derived cells don't enter the CNS except under hypoxia or radiation.

I would give more weight to a 2013 study than a 2006 study, and to a review article in Science over a single study of mice in Journal of Clinical Investigation. But besides Science, what does the current literature say? Does anybody currently believe that bone marrow HSC travel into the brain and become microglia? --Nbauman (talk) 20:17, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Scale bar for the images
Can someone please place or at least estimate a scale bar for images. Are the cells about 1 or 2 microns in size?

Thanks, Brian Wandell — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wandell (talk • contribs) 17:11, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Microglia and Neuropathic Pain
I have added a section aboutt he role that microglia play in neuropathic pain. A great deal of research has highlighted their importance and they are currently being examined for therapeutics. Hopefully this section will be expanded upon as more research is done! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bcaruso54 (talk • contribs) 22:23, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

MHC 'uptake'
Each time the antigen-presenting part of activation gets mentioned, it's phrased like this: "Upon activation they rapidly uptake MHC class I/II proteins and quickly become efficient antigen presenters. In some cases, microglia can also be activated by IFN-γ to present antigens, but do not function as effectively as if they had undergone uptake of MHC class I/II proteins." I don't know what this uptaking is. I would say they 'express' them, but they may have features I'm not aware of. Anyone know?

173.25.54.191 (talk) 20:32, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Role in psychosis
I am compiling sources to add a section on the microglial irregularities of psychosis and specifically schizophrenia. May create subsections for during development and after onset. Posassium (talk) 18:25, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Updates for recent research
The main body of information in this article neglects to fully (or accurately) represent the scope of microglial roles, and relevant and current research has not been considered in many important sections. It is mentioned at several points that phagocytosis is the primary function of CNS microglia — but in consideration of their central role in neuron maintenance (especially in pruning and development), this seems questionable. The article also fails to explain that microglia contribute to synaptic pruning at all. These issues can perhaps be attributed to the outdated (~1985-1995) citations used throughout the introduction.

This article also contains a lot of information that could stand to be presented more efficiently. The anatomy infobox doesn't really catalog cellular features, and could successfully be replaced with a cell infobox. This may also clarify other large chunks of organizable information, particularly lists of cytokines.

I will be making a series of edits next week (April 5-8 2016) to address some of these issues. I will be locating more current journal articles (preferentially reviews) for the introduction and moving some of the current content, like the BBB bit, into more appropriate sections. I also will be replacing the infobox and will begin filling it with information both from the current article and from novel sources. And as stated in my last contribution, I will be tacking on a section for the role in psychosis. Posassium (talk) 18:09, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

In mice, it has been shown that CD22 blockade restores homeostatic microglial phagocytosis in aging brains. Mabspl (talk) 15:09, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

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