Abstract
Neuroinflammation is considered a key pathological process in neurodegenerative diseases of aging, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Many studies have defined phenotypes of reactive microglia, the brain-resident macrophages, with different antigenic markers to identify those potentially causing inflammatory damage. We took an alternative approach with the goal of characterizing the distribution of purinergic receptor P2RY12-positive microglia, a marker previously defined as identifying homeostatic or non-activated microglia. We examined the expression of P2RY12 by dual-color light and fluorescence immunohistochemistry using sections of middle temporal gyrus from AD, high plaque and low plaque non-demented cases in relation to amyloid beta (Aβ) plaques and phosphorylated tau, markers of pathology, and HLA-DR, IBA-1, CD68, and progranulin, microglial phenotype markers. In low plaque cases, P2RY12-positive microglia mostly had non-activated morphologies, while the morphologies of P2RY12-positive microglia in AD brains were highly variable, suggesting its expression could encompass a wider range of phenotypes than originally hypothesized. P2RY12 expression by microglia differed depending on the types of plaques or tangles they were associated with. Areas of inflammation characterized by lack of P2RY12-positive microglia around mature plaques could be observed, but many diffuse plaques showed colocalization with P2RY12-positive microglia. Based on these results, P2RY12 expression by microglia should not be considered solely a marker of resting microglia as P2RY12 immunoreactivity was identifying microglia positive for CD68, progranulin and to a limited extent HLA-DR, markers of activation.
Highlights
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia, currently affecting an estimated 47 million people worldwide, but this number will increase unless effective treatments are discovered [1]
Since the identification of strongly immunoreactive major histocompatibility class II HLA-DR (MHC-II)-positive microglia associated with AD pathological structures [2,3], neuroinflammation is considered a prominent feature of AD pathology [4,5]
Other microglial markers characterized in AD brains include CD68, a lysosomal-associated membrane protein associated with phagocytosis, CD32 and CD64, immunoglobulin Fc receptors, CD11b, colony stimulating factor-1 receptor (CSF-1R), Toll-like receptors (TLR)-2, 3 and 4, ferritin, CD163, Transmembrane Protein (TMEM)-119 [17,18,19,20,21,22,23] as well as Triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells-2 (TREM-2) and CD33, microglial genes with genetic associations to AD [24,25]
Summary
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia, currently affecting an estimated 47 million people worldwide, but this number will increase unless effective treatments are discovered [1]. Recent gene expression profiling studies of microglia isolated from human AD tissue or AD animal models have provided large amounts of data on microglial properties and identified potentially new phenotypic markers for studying microglia in disease [10,11,12,13]. These and other studies have consistently identified the purinergic adenosine diphosphate/triphosphate (ADP/ATP)) receptor P2RY12 as a significant marker for non-activated/homeostatic microglia (examples: [10,12,14,15,16]). In pathologically-involved brains, as P2RY12 expression identified microglia with many of the different morphologies associated with inflammatory activation, classifying P2RY12 expression as a marker of homeostatic (non-activated) microglia needs to be reconsidered
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