The Role of Microglia in Perioperative Neurocognitive Disorders.

Wenguo Fan,Xiao Zhu,Lijia Mai,Hongwen He,Fang Huang

doi:10.3389/fncel.2020.00261

Abstract

Perioperative neurocognitive disorder (PND) is a common phenomenon associated with anesthesia and surgery and has been frequently described in the elderly and susceptible individuals. Microglia, which are the brain’s major resident immune cells, play critical roles in maintaining neuronal homeostasis and synaptic plasticity. Accumulating evidence suggests microglial dysfunction occurring after anesthesia and surgery might perturb neuronal function and induce PND. This review aims to provide an overview of the involvement of microglia in PND to date. Possible cellular and molecular mechanisms regarding the connection between microglial activation and PND are discussed.

Highlights

Microglia are a type of neuroglia occurring in the central nervous system (CNS) and can be defined as tissue-resident macrophages (Greter et al, 2015; Chowen and Garcia-Segura, 2020)
Disordered neurocognitive function after surgery and anesthesia is a heterogeneous set of conditions, which includes any form of the acute event and cognitive decline diagnosed up to 30 days after the procedure and up to 12 months
All forms of the impairment were called POCD, but more recently, perioperative neurocognitive disorders (PND) are recommended to be used as an overarching term for cognitive impairment identified in the perioperative period (Evered et al, 2018)

Summary

Introduction

Microglia are a type of neuroglia occurring in the central nervous system (CNS) and can be defined as tissue-resident macrophages (Greter et al, 2015; Chowen and Garcia-Segura, 2020). They play important roles in the sustainment of normal physiological functions of CNS. The incidence of PND ranges from 8.9% to 46.1% depending on the study and type of surgery (Androsova et al, 2015) It occurs commonly in older patients (Monk et al, 2008; Evered et al, 2018). Since microglia are the macrophages of the CNS and play critical roles in neuroinflammatory disease (West et al, 2019), the significant alterations in some cytokines in CSF from patients indicate

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